Bertoni not only imitated it in one of his scores, but he had the hardihood to write an _Orfeo_ on the text already followed by Gluck in which he plagiarized the work of his illustrious predecessor in a scandalous fashion.
This same aria, changed with real genius and performed with prodigious eclat by Madame Viardot, and re-orchestrated by myself, was one of the strongest reasons for the success of the famous performances at the Theatre-Lyrique.

But it is well understood that it could not properly find a place in an edition where the sole end was artistic sincerity and purity of the text.
From this point of view it would seem that the best manner of giving _Orphee_ would be to conform to the author's definitive version.

A tenor would have to take the part of Orpheus, since we no longer have male contraltos, and to keep to this kind of a voice in _Orphee_ we would have to have recourse to what is called, in theatrical terms, a _travesti_.

There are obstacles to this, however.

The pitch has changed since the Eighteenth Century; it has gone up and it is now impossible, or nearly so, to sing the role written for Legros.