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.