I've been looking forward to hearing this since 2010, when Damon Albarn (frontman for Blur and Gorillaz) and Alan Moore (mad wizard comic writer) announced they were working on an opera based on the life of John Dee (Elizabethan mathemetician and mage). As an admirer of all three men's work--as well as opera, musical theater, and Renaissance music--I thought the project sounded like a slam dunk, an irresistible confection that must have been dreamed up in a laboratory by evil pop scientists tuned into my every cultural craving. Moore was to write the libretto, and Albarn to compose the music. But the collaboration was fraught from the beginning, with the famously agreeable Moore bailing halfway through after Albarn reportedly flaked on some art he was going to do for Moore's zine Dodgem Logic.
Now, I didn't get a chance to see the stage show--from pictures I've seen, the production design looks amazing. Neither have I read Moore's unfinished libretto (which he rather snarkily published in the occult journal Strange Attractor). But it appears from the music, and from reviews I've read, that Dr. Dee is a little short on story. There's not enough exposition here to help along anyone who isn't already familiar with Dee and the angelic magic he undertook with scryer Edward Kelley. And there isn't enough depth of content to sate the occultist segment of the audience, who would certainly prefer to see the pair's magic treated more thoroughly. Dee himself is notably absent from the album: The title character doesn't sing at all, and has only a few spoken lines in the play. Kelley is more of a presence. (He's played by Christopher Robson, whose haunting countertenor is one redeeming quality of the album.) Unfortunately, instead of characters, we get tropes: Dee is a Faustian figure, teetering on the edge of damnation as a result of his hubristic curiosity. Mrs. Dee is a dutiful wife who is torn by split loyalties. And Kelley is your typical semi-reluctant medium (too long a mainstay of network TV dramas), alternately exhilarated and tormented by forces he can't fully grasp. (At least he sounds tormented--it's hard to make out all the lyrics.)
Equally head-scratching is Albarn's decision to sing many of the numbers from a narrative perch, rather than giving them to the cast. His nasally croon, so perfect for the disaffected millennial groove of Blur and the Gorillaz, is jarring and anachronistic when inserted into an opera populated by traditional operatic voices. The contrast is original, but it doesn't exactly work.
All of these shortcomings might be forgiven if the music was better. The production's biggest problem is the lack of standout songs. Albarn's acoustic numbers such as "Apple Carts" and "A Marvelous Dream" are nice enough balladry, but don't showcase the cast members or truly serve the story. A high point might be "The Moon Exalted," but it's a slow and nebulous ensemble piece--not exactly a toe-tapping show-stopper. Too many of the other tracks are tuneless and tepid filler. Stuck in a rut of moody set-pieces, Dr. Dee fails to plumb the depths and scale the heights of both traditional opera and the Enochian magical working on which the story is based.
In short, based on the impressive pedigree of this album, I wanted to like it better. I can only hope that the mediocrity of Dr. Dee doesn't discourage other artists' attempts at interpreting the lives of Dee and Kelley--it would be amazing to see a competently produced biography on stage or screen one day. In the meantime, however, I'll be getting my wizardry fix from yet another community theater production of The Tempest before I reach for this album again.
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