Happy Alchemy: On the Pleasures of Music and the Theatre

A posthumous treasury of brilliant essays that shines with Davies’s unmistakable wit, erudition, and magic.

One of Canada’s–and the world’s–most beloved authors, Robertson Davies was also a devoted fan of opera and the theater. In this follow-up to his first posthumous collection, A Merry Heart , Davies ruminates on these lifelong passions, offering a diverse sampling of personal reflections on everything from the ancient Greeks to Lewis Carroll, Scottish folklore to Laurence Olivier, the sins of Verdi to the virtues of melodrama. The combined effect of these thirty-three essays, lectures, plays, and librettos– edited by his widow and daughter–is true alchemy, as “readers . . . come away with a renewed appreciation of the ease with which Davies routinely transformed his sometimes erudite passions into delightful entertainments” ( The New York Times Book Review ).

The book in thoroughly entertaining fashion acquaints us with Davies’ expansive erudition and gift for rendering literary and historical complexities in simple, human terms.” — The New York Times

“Lovingly collected. . . . A welcome addition to a corpus like no other in contemporary literature.” — Kirkus Reviews