Rating: 3.25/5 
The opera made a nine-day run in July 2011 as part of the Manchester International Festival, which Albarn has been involved with since Gorillaz’s performance of Demon Days Live in the middle of the last decade. Dr Dee is rife with Elizabethan era instrumentation including the lute, recorder and more obscure music makers, along with Allen’s African drumming and use of the kora. Albarn does the harmonium work and lends his hand to the infrequent guitar. The score opens with birdsong, rushing water and a tolling church bell. Woodwinds and the brass section spring to life and the harmonium drones over it all, setting a melancholic and ominous tone. There’s a dramatic component to this genesis, even though the album as a whole won’t provide much in the way of coherent narrative without the visual element. The score tends to vacillate between dark brooding and the lazily pastoral, and Albarn eases into the latter with “Apple Carts,” the first of a fair number of tracks to which he lends his own voice. Thankfully, Albarn doesn’t attempt to contort his vocals into something resembling an opera singer’s. And his widely recognized voice does, in fact, add broader appeal and accessibility to an album subtitled An English Opera.
Female vocals take over in “The Moon Exalted,” adding a greater theatrical dimension as Albarn sings in response, backed with the swelling of lute and woodwinds. The bass voice in the sinister “A Man of England” resonates well, and along with cellos, bassoons and some sporadic plucking, the track is dark as ink. During the brief minute-long “Coronation,” chamber vocals billow, giving way to lute and the scratchy play-by-play of a queen’s enthronement. “A Prayer” unites baritone and mezzo-soprano vocals and pairs them with the tremolo of strings. Allen adds an African drum solo in “Preparation” and even with the shift in instrumentation the transition is seamless. Albarn has created a musical score so varied and richly textured that no change in focus comes as a surprise and no track is entirely predictable. This remains true even when distortion drifts over the scattered percussion and whispered vocals of “9 Point Star.”
The 18-track score ends as it began, bookended by bird chirps and a babbling brook. This score stands up to repeated listens and is accessible to those not typically inclined to appreciate opera. The storyline is virtually indecipherable from the score alone, and while the music evokes plenty of mental imagery, the lack of actual visuals makes the whole thing somewhat less enticing. I can’t imagine Dr Dee ever being viewed as anything more than one of Albarn’s curveballs, even if it manages to catch the corner of the strike zone. Despite lacking the timelessness of much of Albarn’s other work, Dr Dee does possess the je ne sais quoi of his entire oeuvre, but in this case it’s an ornate garnish not a main course. When all is said and done, Dr Dee demonstrates yet again that Albarn is a true Renaissance man whose vision stretches even wider than his global audience. Who knows what this musical mad scientist will cook up next.
