On paper, the ill-fated tale of a respected alchemist driven to the occult sounds like a subject more suited to a Hollywood-style thriller than the gentle whimsy of English folk.

But the fall from grace of Dr John Dee – currently the subject of a new opera written by Damon Albarn and Rufus Norris for the Manchester International Festival – is one so rooted in Elizabethan society that it lends itself well to such a West End reinterpretation.

The problem, though, is what to understand the format as.

Dr Dee is billed as an opera and, though it bears few of opera’s traditional hallmarks, it is an exquisite and fascinating piece of storytelling perhaps better understood as a meeting of a traditional Elizabethan masque theatre and particularly high-brow musical.

Dr Dee’s story, of course, occurs some centuries earlier in the Elizabethan court where science and astrology were in their infancies. And we’re transported back in time through an amusing parade of history’s key personnel: Sid Vicious, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, Jane Austen, Horatio Nelson and King Charles, each plummeting off the end of a raised platform as the years are rolled back still further. It’s the kind of intelligent but accessible theatrical device that you might expect from Norris, whose  reputation for artful production is all over Dr Dee, albeit at times at the expense of some clarity over the storyline. Certainly, it wouldn’t hurt to swot up on Dee’s rather tragic story pre-show.

Historically speaking, Dee’s contribution to modern society is quite overlooked. He was once Elizabeth I’s confidante, a scholastic man who established libraries and studied everything from chemistry to cartography.

But Dee was driven mad by his obsession with spirit medium Edward Kelley, whose intentions rapidly became less centred on Dee’s own personal enlightenment and more on Kelley’s desire to sleep with Dee’s wife.

In one of the opera’s few spoken scenes, we’re offered a taste of the genius Dee sacrificed in a complex mathematical monologue impressively delivered by John Dee senior Bertie Carvel.

And while he’s centre stage much of the time, Carvel doesn’t hog the limelight. Melanie Pappenheim’s haunting presence as the spirit, Steven Page’s Tim Burton-esque Walsingham and Christopher Robson’s portrayal of Kelley – the psychic’s sinister presence emphasised by Robson’s icy countertenor voice – are all divine.

Musically, though, Dr Dee seems best understood as a melancholic meditation of Englishness. And so it seems fitting that Albarn should perform this from a lofty position on a raised platform above the action, a modern day narrator conjuring up dreamy images that unfold on the stage beneath him.

The music flies wilfully between Albarn’s familiar lamenting folk and dramatic world rhythms overlaid with Elizabethan melodies – an unusual space were koras, shawns, dulcians, lutes and viola de Gambias meet. And it’s all underpinned by the expertise of the BBC Philharmonic which, under the direction of conductor Andre de Ridder, provide endlessly dramatic foundations for the story.

Whether Dr Dee will still play for as many years as its nearest theatrical cousin, Marlow’s Doctor Faustus (perhaps a deliberate likeness, given that Dee was viewed as a Faustian figure in his lifetime), remains to be seen.

But for making brave strides into new theatrical territory, Dr Dee certainly deserves to be seen beyond the festival.

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