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Dr Dee -  Damon Albarn's Opera
'He shouldn't have listened to that horrible man.' Photograph: Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage
'He shouldn't have listened to that horrible man.' Photograph: Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage

What Damon Albarn's opera really means . . .

This article is more than 12 years old
Dr Dee is quite a puzzle. But some audience members have a crack at decoding it

Among the highlights of Damon Albarn's spectacular opera Dr Dee are an enormous live raven, a stilt-walking spymaster and a couple having sex under a hovering Queen Elizabeth. But does anyone really understand the story? Here, some audience members say what they thought it was about.

▶ "Basically, it's just an argument between science and tradition and maybe nature as well, so he's coming up with all these theories but he's held back by religion and it's also very much about England as well." (Daragh O'Hare)

▶ "It was an expressive dramatisation of a metaphysical life interpreted in the music and the medieval instruments embodying the Elizabethan age with parallels in modern life." (Sue Curd)

▶ "I think he gave up his soul for knowledge, something like that." (Jim Kay)

▶ "He just made a really bad mistake, didn't he? He shouldn't have listened to that horrible man." (Emma Wellard)

▶ "There's a guy who is a mathematician/scientist who somehow gets into politics because he's good at chess and then he orchestrates the navigation of the English empire, then he starts to tamper with mysticism, starts to summon demons and he uses another guy who is his link to the other world and then he gets more into his work and starts to neglect his wife. The sidekick then is talking to the angels and then John Dee has to agree for the guy to sleep with his wife to do something mystical and then he gets old and he regrets it and he dies." (Andy Cane)

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