Bravo Toro! Carmen and the madness of Sevilla

69 days since selling up, David Jones recording.

 

We stayed in Sevilla for 7 nights in a wonderful top floor apartment with roof terrace and Jacuzzi tub. Budget, what budget!  It was hot and humid and the roof top Jacuzzi was a welcome relief after a day of touring the city.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sevilla is a beautiful city with its fountains, plazas and palm trees. We spent a very relaxing week exploring and taking in the atmosphere.  We enjoyed wondering through the Alcazar and its gardens, the famous Moorish Palace of Sevilla.

  

For our last night we bought tickets to see a performance of Carmen in the bull ring of Sevilla.  For those of you who don’t know Carmen is an opera written by Bizet , here is a brief synopsis of the story.  (I only know this from looking it up!)  Carmen is about a beautiful Spanish gypsy; all the soldiers fancy her and want her except one, Don Jose.  He is betrothed to another, so ignores Carmen.  Carmen, not used to being ignored, seduces him.   He falls in love with her and goes to jail for her.  When he gets out of jail he finds she has fallen for another a super star matador and doesn’t want him back.  He is so incensed he kills her at the bull ring in Seville.

 

We were both very excited to see the opera performed at “the actual” bullring.  Curtain up at 10.30pm.  It was really exciting going into the bullring at night with all the lights, especially as we would have never gone to a bullring to see a bull fight.  Like most things in Spain everything is a bit vague.  So curtain came up at 11pm. Thankfully it was a cool evening, but it was fun watching the senoras and some senores flapping their fans.  The performance was not quite what we had expected: a typical Spanish brass band played the music and the performance mainly consisted of flamenco dancing and guitar playing.  The famous songs from the opera pre recorded were played over loud speakers.  But the dancing was good.

Then at the mid point around 12.20am the entire cast sat or stood at the end of the stage, with the empty bullring in front of them.  All the lights went on and a side door to the bullring opened and then we waited 2 minutes,3 minutes, the audience started to chatter.  The cast remained still in there positions. After 6 minutes a big black bull came reluctantly out from the door, with a cheer from the audience.  The senora who was singing started to wail “Bravo Toro!” Then five Matadors came bouncing onto the main arena.  At first I was a bit shocked and hoped we weren’t going to see a bull fight.  The matadors then proceeded to outrun the bull and performed leap frogs over the bull, not using any capes or spears to harm him.  The performance lasted 20 minutes.  Then a herd of cows came into the ring to entice the bull out of the ring. It was fascinating!  The cast then continued with their performance ending with the death of Carmen in the centre of the bull ring, around 1am.  It was an amazing end to our week in Sevilla.

 

"Such Fun!"

 

I have uploaded some more photos today has we have the opportunity to do so with wifi. Let me know what you think: it's a bit strange typing this with not much feed back.  Give me some feedback please! Or this is just like writing your own diary. Maybe it is?! Hasta Luego!

Comments

[Andrew Jackson]

should really keep up with the ex-boss eh? if you'd told me you were goiong to Zaragoza, Paul, I could have hooked you up with my wine maker pal who lives near there - never mind, glad its going well - four chapters? long chapters? Keep scribbling!