The libretto, in polymetric verse and filled with lush mythological imagery, is a re-telling of the Ovidian tale of the loves of Venus and Adonis.

[3] The Viceroy of Peru, Don Melchor Portocarrero y Lasso de la Vega, instructed Torrejón to compose a piece of dramatic music for the Kingdom's celebration of King Philip V's 18th birthday and the first anniversary of his succession to the throne.

[10] On 26 September 2013, La Purpura de la rosa received its Israeli premiere at the Abu Gosh Festival performed by Ensemble PHOENIX on period instruments and its vocal branch VOCE PHOENIX, conducted from the viola da gamba by Myrna Herzog, with staging by Regina Alexandrovskaya.

[12] The opera is preceded by the customary loa (dedicatory prologue or allegorical paen[14]) celebrating Philip V, and emphasizing his goodness and justice.

¡Viva el sucesor del imperio que, puesto a sus plantas, seguro afianza su eterno blasón!The ensuing opera recounts the love between Venus and Adonis, the jealousy of Mars, and his desire for revenge.

He is eventually discovered hiding in the bushes and interrogated by Marte, who fails to recognize him, but is suspicious of his riddles about love.

Revived by the soldiers' songs, Marte heads for the forest looking for Adonis, who is again chasing the wild boar that had alarmed the peasants.

Seeing the distraught goddess with her hair loose, half naked, and her hands bloodstained, Belona is moved to pity and sings a lament.

Marte cruelly describes the death of Adonis to Venus, and reveals his bloody body lying among the roses.

Amor then appears from the sky to announce that Jupiter has been moved by the plight of the lovers and will elevate them together to Mount Olympus – Adonis in the form of a flower (an anemone) and Venus as the Evening Star.

[15] There is a single source of Torrejón's opera at the Biblioteca Nacional del Perú in Lima; a second manuscript preserved at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in England does not contain music.

A partial copy of the music in draft format, which closely follows the Lima source, was recently found in Cusco.

A third publication of the music was issued in Madrid by the Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales, under the editorship of Louis Stein (1999).

Other editions, currently in manuscript, were prepared by Bernardo Illari for performances at Bloomington, Geneva, and Madrid in 1999, and by Diana Fernández Calvo for an Israeli production in 2013.

It has some lacunas, including a missing chorus and a condensed presentation of the scene in Venus's garden (beginning at lines 1570, measure 2847 of the Kassel edition).

[16] The music by Torrejón conserves much of the character and the idiosyncrasies contained in the comedies of Calderón as previously set by Juan Hidalgo.

The erotic nature of the text is heightened by the use of dance rhythms, musical repetitions, and sensual lyrical lines.

However, the scores of other late seventeenth century musical plays in Spain suggest that the instruments would include harps, guitars, viols, violins, clarino and regular trumpets, drums, and castanets.