Orpheus1.0250

Robertson Davies, 1913-1995. The Lyre of Orpheus (evocation of the myth in the title; but also in the action of the novel). Canadian contemporary novel. New York: Viking. 1988.

Arthur Cornish chairs the board of the fictitious Toronto-based Cornish Foundation. Under his direction, the foundation commissions the completion of Arthur of Britain, or the Magnanimous Cockold, an opera which the long deceased E.T.A. Hoffmann had (in fact) conceived but never brought beyond its preliminary phases. The Foundation supports the graduate work of Hulda Schnakenburg whose doctoral work is to result in a libretto and completed score in the style of the Romantic Hoffmann. The superbly unpleasant Schnak is domesticated through the creation of the opera, which is premiered at tremendous expense at the Strattford Festival in the novel's final movement.
The deception of liars is the gist of the title's pun.

As a supreme act of artistic creativity, the opera's production ultimately awakens Hoffmann from his over-long slumber in Limbo and literates him for eternal rest. (p. 90)

The Lyre of Orpheus opens the door to the Underworld. This statement, first articulated by E.T.A. Hoffmann, recurs thematically through the novel.

The Cornish Foundation is the novelist's creation, which his readers may follow in the Cornish Trilogy comprised of Rebel Angels (1982), What's Bred in the Bone (1985), and finally The Lyre of Orpheus.