As for the orchestra, sometimes it followed Gluck's text and sometimes it borrowed bits of orchestration which Meyerbeer had written for the Opera at Berlin. This orchestration is interesting, and I know it well for I have had it in hand. It is only fair to say that Gluck, from some inexplicable caprice, did not give the same care to the instrumentation of Armide that he did to Orphee, Alcesti, and the Iphigenies. The trombones do not appear at all and the drums and flutes only at rare intervals. Re-orchestration is not absolutely necessary and Meyerbeer's is no more reprehensible than those with which Mozart enriched Handel's Messe and La Fete d'Alexandre. What was inadmissible was not deciding frankly for one version or the other. It was like a badly patched coat which shows the old cloth in one place and the new in another. << less