Another New Background

The setting for the story of Carmen is 1820, but the story was written in 1845. And then it became an opera in 1875. The last scene in the opera takes place outside the bullring in Seville, Spain.  I decided to  try to show the building as it must have looked back then.

First, I checked Google maps to see how it looks today. 

Then there was this picture of the stage set for the Metropolitan Opera in 1915. Even though they had no computers in those days, it looks as if they used Photoshop to stretch the building out to mammoth dimensions! I like the buildings on the right-hand side--they look like skyscrapers from Munchkinland!

Luckily, I found this old painting by a Spanish painter, Manuel Cabral Aguado-Bejarano, entitled "The Death of Carmen" (1890). The painter was born in Seville, so he must have seen the bullring many times. His version looks similar to the current building, with some small differences. For the most part, the building is the same one.

I love this painting, because the composition is so interesting. The angle of the sun shows that it is either early in the morning or late in the afternoon, which adds to the drama. This is the look I wanted for my version of Carmen, so I drew the background as similarly as I could to the 1890 painting.