[3][4] An opera titled Doctor Dee was originally planned as a collaboration between Albarn, Gorillaz partner Jamie Hewlett and comic book author Alan Moore.

[5] According to Moore, he was approached by Albarn and Hewlett to collaborate on an opera featuring superheroes, but instead he suggested John Dee as a subject.

[6] Moore is credited for "inspiration" in the opera's official programme[7] and his incomplete libretto was published in Strange Attractor magazine.

[10] The opera was scored for a band combining Elizabethan English instruments (viola da gamba, shawm, dulcian, crumhorn, recorder, lute) with the African kora and the distinctive drumming of Nigerian percussionist Tony Allen.

[9][11] The Guardian gave the Manchester production four stars, saying that it "reaches to the heart of the tragedy of an overreaching intellect destroyed by a deal with a second-rate Mephistopheles".