This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
And Finally Artist News
Damon Albarn working on new opera, despite being “a complete idiot” when it comes to the genre
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 14 July 2023
Damon Albarn has revealed that he is currently working on an opera, putting Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s ‘The Magic Flute Part II’ to music for the first time.
Von Goethe started writing the libretto for a sequel to Mozart’s 1791 opera in the mid-1790s, which he then published in 1807. But it was never actually completed or set to music, a task Albarn has now taken on more than 200 years later.
“I’m doing an opera at the moment, using Goethe’s fragment he wrote about ‘The Magic Flute Part II’, which is fascinating”, he explained on a new episode of the Broken Record podcast. “You’ve heard of Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’? Well, Goethe, who is a contemporary of Mozart, wrote ‘Part II’ of that – the sequel – but it never got put to music. It’s this legendary lost thing”.
This is not Albarn’s first foray into the world of opera, of course. He previously wrote and performed ‘Monkey: Journey To The West’ in 2007 and ‘Doctor Dee’ in 2011, both premiered at the Manchester International Festival. However, the Blur and Gorillaz frontman adds, he’s still not certain how qualified he is to work on such material.
“I don’t really know what I’m doing”, he admits. “I never know what I’m doing in that world, I’m a complete idiot. I don’t know if it’s any good. With songs, I’m more confident about that”.
Currently preparing for the release of a new Blur album next week, Albarn also revealed that he is working on new Gorillaz material with creative partner Jamie Hewlett. But not as you know it.
“It’s not going to be as dramatic as a quantum shift, it will be a paradigm shift, it will be very different”, he says. “It will be an entirely different approach to everything – to the band, to everything … You need that for it to stay alive, really”.
Blur’s new album ‘The Ballad Of Darren’ is out on 21 Jul, with the band set to livestream a performance of it from London’s Hammersmith Apollo on 25 Jul. Tickets for that are available now.
