The solo piano piece composed by Claude Debussy in 1904 was inspired by one of the Cythera Island paintings of the immortal figure of French rococo painting, Jean-Antoine Watteau. According to the legend, the Greek island was the birthplace of Venus, the Goddess of love, who came to life arising from the sea.

Fashioned from Russian folk tales, Swan Lake is one of the ballets most often performed in the world. This world famous piece of one of the greatest composers of Russian romantic music, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was premiered with a great success in the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow in 1877.

The exotic island of Ceylon is the scene of the opera “The pearl fishers” (Les pêcheurs de perles) by the French composer Georges Bizet,  first performed in 1863. The realistic melodies of the tragic story proved to be too modern for his contemporaries. Unfortunately, the greatness of the piece was a revelation only for his posterity, yet it has become one of the most frequently played operas of the 20th century.