Yet Dee was also an alchemist and astrologer (his date of birth is known precisely as 16:02 13 July 1527, preserved in a horoscope that Dee himself drew up). He strove for decades to commune with angels and decipher Enochian, the heavenly language given to Adam in the Garden of Eden and lost with the fall of the Tower of Babel. For Dee it was all part of the same parcel: “I always wanted to know what was knowable in the world”, he wrote. Any modern scientist could say the same, yet Dee's position in history, just ahead of a revolution in scientific thinking and method, is fascinating. He is said to have inspired Christopher Marlowe's Faustus, Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, and the character of Prospero in William Shakespeare's The Tempest. And now he is the subject of an opera, Dr Dee, which received its London premiere by English National Opera last month.
Dr Dee is the creation of award-winning theatre director Rufus Norris and musician Damon Albarn — a man whose musical interests range as widely as Dr Dee's intellectual ones, but who is most famous as the frontman of 1990s 'Britpop' band Blur. It's not Albarn's first foray into opera, having scored Monkey: Journey to the West for the Manchester International Festival in 2007. Indeed, Dr Dee had its first outing at that festival in 2011, but has since undergone some reworking for its London run.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution