Damon Albarn has shared a preview of his forthcoming “electro-opera” The Magic Flute II: La Malédiction.

The opera, which is set to premiere in Paris next Thursday (March 27), is based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1807’s The Magic Flute Part II. The 1791 original was an opera in two acts to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. You can view footage below.

Albarn previously said of the opera in its early stages: “I’m doing an opera at the moment, using Goethe’s fragment he wrote about The Magic Flute Part II, which is fascinating.”

He continued: “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.”

Now in a new statement, Albarn said: “The idea of ​​me writing an opera and for it to be a continuation of The Magic Flute sounds ridiculous, it was and is, not only was I grappling with the genius of Mozart but I had Goethe to contend with too!!

“I suppose I took a relatively reductionist approach to the question, how the fuck do I do this? The answer came from a surprising source but one no less brilliant, Kraftwerk.”

Producer Jean-Luc Choplin who worked with Albarn on his previous production in the ’00s, Monkey: Journey To The West, added: “Reading Benoît Chantre’s book on Friedrich Hölderlin, Le Clocher de Tübingen, I discovered that during an evening in Tübingen attended by Hölderlin, Schiller and Goethe, the latter said he was writing a sequel to Mozart’s famous ‘Singspiel’, The Magic Flute.

“This triggered my curiosity and I set off in search of Goethe’s script and sketches. I soon became convinced that there was an opportunity to develop the opera that Goethe had dreamed of.”

He continued: “As Hölderlin and Goethe prophesied, and paraphrasing Benoît Chantre, this electro opera speaks to us of a possible ‘European night’, and at a time when glaciers are melting and cities are ablaze, this new fable is a good way to think about our world and draw a moral lesson of courage and optimism from it.”

The show will run for three nights at the Théâtre du Lido until March 30. You can purchase tickets here.

As well as working on Monkey: Journey To The West, Albarn also worked on the 2011 opera Dr Dee.

Meanwhile Blur, recently opened up to NME about what the future has in store for them – particularly after their huge Live At Wembley Stadium concert film and their set at Coachella 2024.

“We can’t leave it too long because we’re knocking on,” Graham Coxon said, looking at upcoming announcements from the band. “Creatively, we’ll always be able to do something, but it’s important that we live life for a bit and hopefully not go through something so traumatic before getting back together again.

“Damon’s always said too that we need to live life so we have something we can bring together if we’re ever going to do anything again. If that all happens, then there shouldn’t be any reason why not.”

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