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 is the third novel in the Cornish Trilogy.
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