ABSTRACT
Damon Albarn's opera Dr Dee was performed in Manchester and London over just a few nights in 2011 and 2012. Despite this, a popular album of extracts was released, and material from the show continues to be performed in venues around the world. However, the versions that made it to the album are different from the ones in the show: gone are the period instruments and much of the narrative, to be replaced by Albarn's ‘orthodox’ neo-folk.
It becomes clear that the creation of Dr Dee was fraught with problems, and it was ultimately compiled in a brief period of work leading up to the show's premiere. Several items that appeared to be newly composed turned out to be taken from unused Gorillaz material, and the opera's big hit—The Marvelous Dream—was, arguably, not composed for Dr Dee at all. Albarn's decision to remove the medievalisms from the opera for the album and later performances can be seen as him restoring this material to the state in which he conceived of it, rather than a cynical act. Conversely, it was in the opera itself that medievalisms were applied as deliberate acts to create a relevant sound-world for the audience.
