In 2008, the artistic director of Music Theatre Wales (one of Europe's leading contemporary opera companies), Michael McCarthy, aware of William Crozier’s lifelong interest in colour, the landscape and Hispanic culture, invited him to create a painting to use in publicity for a new opera then in development ‘Letters of a Love Betrayed’. The opera was based on the novel Eva Luna by the notable Chilean author, Isabel Allende and had its world premiere at the Royal Opera House in 2009.
Crozier was a passionate opera-lover and he leapt at the opportunity. He wrote to McCarthy at the time:
'This is the first picture I have ever painted which does not have its origin in something I have seen. The image is borrowed from a similar scorching landscape I knew when I lived in the mountains of Andalusia. I was also led by the scenario of the opera and the imaginary landscapes of Allende and other Latin American novelists and poets, Marquez and Neruda chief among them [...] I have enjoyed working on this painting and my pleasure will be complete when I hear the music which I could only envisage in my mind’s eye'