The Mask of Orpheus Orpheus must travel through is given a symbolic name. At the start of this act, time is moving backwards: Orpheus travels back out of and into the Underworld, and Euridice dies once more. Then time moves forwards as Orpheus leaves the Underworld again. One version of the Orpheus story is that he is then killed by a thunderbolt thrown by Zeus, while another is that he is dismembered by the women of Dionysus. Orpheus then becomes the subject of a cult and an oracle. Time flows backwards once more, and Orpheus' death is acted out again, and the opera ends
The Lyre of Orpheus (novel) themselves in Toronto to monitor and record the production of the opera from start to finish. As often happens in Davies' novels, all is not simple; for example, the ghost of Hoffman (ETAH), trapped in Limbo as a result of the unsatisfactory state of his artistic work, attends and comments on the ongoing proceedings. Nor is all peaceful among the characters, as they react to Powell's seduction of Maria Cornish, Dahl-Soot's seduction of Schnak, and the inevitable tensions created by the effort to mount an operatic production. The Lyre of Orpheus (novel) The Lyre of Orpheus, first published by Macmillan