specimen
of manhood, with a curled black beard, in all the glory of his youth and
vigor superbly arrayed in a red cloak trimmed with gold!

The stage setting was also extraordinary. In the second act Renaud went
to sleep at the back of the stage, forcing Armide to speak the whole of
the beautiful scene which follows, one of the most important in the
part, at a distance from the footlights and with her back to the
audience.

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.

Afterwards I saw _Armide_ treated in another way.

Did you ever happen to cherish the memory of a delightful and
picturesque city, where everything made a harmonious whole, where the
beautiful walks were arched over by old trees--and later come back to it
to find it embellished, the trees cut down, the walks replaced by
enormous buildings which dwarfed into insignificance the ancient marvels
which gave the city its charm?

This was the case with me when I saw _Armide_ again in a city which I
shall not name. The opera had been judged superannuated and had been
"improved." A young composer had written a new score in which he
inserted here and there such bits of Gluck as he thought worthy of being
preserved. A costly and magnificently imbecile luxuriousness set off the
whole piece. I may be pardoned the cruel adjective when I say that in
the scene of Hate, so deeply inspired, and which takes place in a sort
of cave, they relegated the chorus to the wings to make a place for
dragons, fantastic birds beating their wings, and other deviltries.
This, of course, deprived the chorus of all its power and distinction.

But the best was at the end of the second act. The