British Identity in Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee: An English Opera

Dr Dee : An English Opera was composed by Damon Albarn and presented as part of the Cultural Olympiad for the London Olympic Games of 2012. The opera allowed Albarn, who became a household name in Britain with his band Blur, to express his understanding of Englishness. National identity has been an important theme throughout Albarn’s career. Indeed, in the 1990s Blur spearheaded the Britpop movement which aimed at producing an overtly British music. This paper presents a critical analysis of Dr Dee and demonstrates that Britpop’s conservative idea of national identity is retrieved. The references used by Albarn point to a restricted view of national identity focused on a narrow Anglo-centric view of Empire. The elision of postcolonial Britain is translated in the musical realm as the expression of national identity tends to be located within the pop/rock paradigm, thus playing down the role of art music and musics brought by the New Commonwealth migrants. Paradoxically, the Olympic context of Dr Dee was characterized by the celebration of a multicultural national identity. A brief comparison with Albarn’s other projects demonstrates how the contrasted, if not contradictory, understandings of Englishness presented illustrate the current debate about national identity in Britain.