 The production famously ran for 502 performances, remarkably successful for the time, although it marked the last high point of the conquest of London by the French composer, whose place, already challenged by Lecocq and Planquette in the British capital, was soon taken by Gilbert and Sullivan.It is a fantasy plot built around the real-life celebrated French actress Marie Justine Benoîte Duronceray (1727–1775), her playwright-manager husband Charles-Simon Favart (1710–1792) and the actress-admiring general Maurice de Saxe (1696–1750), who also appears in the verismo opera "Adriana Lecouvreur".At an inn in Arras a coach arrives and the passengers go to their rooms.