Vladimir Ivanoff and Sarband tell the story of a fascinating approach and find Europe in Turkey and the Orient in Paris.

It was a great love: Sultan Abdülaziz, one of the last rulers of the Ottoman Empire,
enthusiastically composed attractive European-style music.
At the same time, western artists mostly saw in the Ottoman Empire the mysterious Orient, an imaginary landscape,
full of dark desires, surpassing each other with ever new exotisms.

Ottoman Turkey understood itself as a political and cultural part of the European alliance,
but was only tolerated by the western powers as the "sick man of Europe".
At the same time, in European culture, the geographical Orient increasingly became an undetermined place,
an "Orient Imaginaire", resource for unstilled longing, dark desires and debauched fantasies which were forbidden in Europe.

Therefore the Orient could not become a part of Europe but had to remain an alien culture in order
to further fire the collective European imagination.

The great love was unrequited, and Sheherazade still has to knock in vain on the door of Europe.