International chess virtuoso François-André Danican Philidor’s fortunes as a musician at the court of Versailles were transformed when he turned his attention to the new genre of opéra-comique. Sancho Pança, gouverneur dans l’isle de Barataria derives from Cervantes’s famous novel Don Quijote, covering Sancho Panza’s adventures as governor of a fictitious island on which a succession of characters plot to cure him of his delusions of grandeur. Opera Lafayette’s production of this comedy revue is a ‘sparkle of shining surfaces’. (Washington Post)