The Cornish Trilogy (2)

The Cornish Foundation is thriving under the directorship of Arthur Cornish when Arthur and his beguiling wife, Maria Theotoky, decide to underetake a project worthy of Francis Cornish, whose vast fortune endows the Foundation. The remarkably unattractive, extraordinarily talented music student Hulda Schnakenburg is commissioned to complete E.T.A. Hoffmann’s unfinished opera Arthur of Britain, or The Magnanimous Cockold; and the scholarly priest Simon Darcourt finds himself charged with writing the libretto.

Complications both practical and emotional arise: the gypsy in Maria’s blood rises with a vengence; Darcourt stoops to petty crime; and various others indulge in perjury, blackmail, and other unsavory pursuits. Hoffmann’s dictum, “the lyre of Orpheus opens the door of the underworld,” seems all too true—especially when the long-hidden secrets of Francis Cornish himself are finally revealed.

The Lyre of Orpheus

Francis Cornish was always good at keeping secrets. From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small-town embalmer, a master art restorer, a Bavarian countess, and various masters of espionage, the events in Francis’s life were not always what they seemed.

In this wonderfully ingenious portrait of an art expert and collector of international renown, Robertson Davies has created a spell-binding tale of artistic triumph and heroic deceit. It is a tale told in stylish, elegant prose, endowed with lavish portions of Davies’s wit and wisdom.