The Many Lives of the Greatest Adventurer of the Eighteenth Century.
Fraud? Murderer? Mystic? Vile Seducer? Evil Genius?
Guiseppe Balsamo, the Count of Cagliostro, was an 18th Century Sicilian who became a magician, a mystic, a healer, a Freemason, swindler and last, but not least, a pornographer. He was famous throughout Europe, and so popular in France that his imprisonment for allegedly stealing a diamond necklace from Marie Antoinette fanned the flames of revolution . . .
The Count was so controversial, he became the central figure in both Goethe's 'Faust', Part One and Mozart's 'The Magic Flute'. His story is told through the eyes of seven of his contemporaries, including Casanova, Goethe and Catherine the Great.
'The Seven Ordeals Of Count Cagliostro' tells the extraordinary story of a lifetime of political intrigue that was to lead Cagliostro to become the key figure in the Diamond Necklace Affair, precipitating the French Revolution and culminating in his own ruin.
