La Jeunesse d'Hercule...from Saint-Säens

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor, and pianist, known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse Macabre, Samson and Delilah, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, and his Symphony No. 3 (Organ Symphony).
As a composer, Saint-Saëns was often criticized for his refusal to embrace romanticism and at the same time, rather paradoxically, for his adherence to the conventions of 19th-century musical language.
For the last of his symphonic poems, in 1877, Saint-Saëns returned to the legend of Hercules. The fable relates that Hercules on his entrance upon life saw two roads lie open before him -- that of pleasure and that of virtue. Insensible to the seductions of nymphs and bacchantes, the hero chooses the paths of struggle and combats, at the end of which he catches a glimpse of the reward of immortality, through the flames of the funeral pyre.