Knight-errant

Carlo Donati is the happiest man in Naples — a young advocate with his name new on his cards and a betrothal without a cloud — when a family scandal comes back to the city with a touring opera company: his sister's husband, the manager Merlino, and the wife he mistreats. To stand by her Carlo gives up far more than he was raised to expect and goes on the stage as a singer, while an English girl, Francesca Britton, watches what the choice costs him. Edna Lyall was a clergyman's daughter who wrote about religious doubt and unpopular causes and sold enormously. Fifty-nine plates, from Turner to Frith, follow the novel's opera houses, salons and pilgrims with scenes of performance and devotion.