Hailed as a literary masterpiece, Robertson Davies' The Cornish Trilogy comes to a brilliant conclusion in the bestselling Lyre of Orpheus.There is an important decision to be made. The Cornish Foundation is thriving under the directorship of Arthur Cornish when Arthur and his beguiling wife, Maria Theotoky, decide to undertake a project worthy of Francis Cornish -- connoisseur, collector, and notable eccentric -- whose vast fortune endows the Foundation. The grumpy, grimy, extraordinarily talented music student Hulda Schnakenburg is commissioned to complete E. T .A. Hoffmann's unfinished opera Arthur of Britain, or The Magnanimous Cuckold; 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 vengeance; 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 to be all too true -- especially when the long-hidden secrets of Francis Cornish himself are finally revealed.
Baroque and deliciously funny, this third book in The Cornish Trilogy shows Robertson Davies at his very considerable best.
"Robertson Davies is the sort of novelist readers can hardly wait to tell their friends about." -- The Washington Post Book World
- ISBN10 067082416X
- ISBN13 9780670824168
- Publish Date 29 September 1988
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 12 January 1995
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Imprint Viking
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 480
- Language English