Damon Albarn's new opera will be a summer treat

Gorillaz star is ready for something more artistically ambitious.

Gorillaz singer Damon Albarn is embarking on an opera as part of the Manchester International Festival
Gorillaz singer Damon Albarn is embarking on an opera as part of the Manchester International Festival

Normally, I have to suppress a sigh of profound scepticism when I hear about middle-aged rock stars deciding to embark on the writing of an opera - they don’t realise the problems involved and overall the result almost invariably measures much higher in pre-performance hype than it does in the delivery of solid musical or dramatic quality.

But I’m delighted and intrigued at the news that Damon Albarn – best known as the singer-songwriter of the Britpop group Blur and one of the powers behind the ‘virtual’ band Gorillaz - is taking up the challenge. Dr Dee, based on the mysterious life of John Dee, the Elizabethan alchemist, astrologer and spy, will receive its premiere at the Manchester International Festival in July, with Albarn playing a leading role himself and Rufus Norris directing the production. Reports also suggest that it will come to London in 2012 as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

The hope I nurse that something genuinely interesting will emerge from this project isn’t just based on the knowledge that Albarn is a very fine musician, with a questing imagination and complex intelligence. What is even more encouraging is that Albarn has had the sense to go about the opera thing very carefully and not rush in where angels fear to tread.

Monkey, his first essay in the genre, was a huge success at the MIF in 2007, but it was couched in the form of a ‘Chinese Opera’ - that is, it was a gloriously colourful and rumbustious theatrical entertainment, somewhere between a circus and a ballet, rather than a fully sung drama.

Four years on, and I think he’s ready for something more artistically ambitious. He’s been doing plenty of homework: I’ve often seen him at English National Opera and heard that he’s been listening hard to the Italian repertory from Monteverdi to Puccini. Albarn may have got the reputation of being a bumptious and cocky character, but nobody could accuse him of being smug – he’s always been someone been ready to learn and move forward, and that’s why I’d put good money on Dr Dee proving to be one of the most exciting events in the summer operatic calendar.