On the matter of the glass armonica, I vaguely remember hearing of an orchestra, museum, or something-or-other that owned one and one of the, er, keys, glasses, bowls, whatever you call them had broken (it is actually made out of glass, don't you know--
). It seems that Corning was willing to manufacture a substitute for something like ten thousand dollars. That was 30 years ago and I imagine you could multiply that by ten or even 100 today. Sort of explains why there aren't many around, doesn't it?
Actually, Karl, I was not familiar with the scoring for ophicleide in those pieces. I think of it as an organ stop, and ironically, a theater organ stop (classical organs also use the names of many bizarre, usually archaic instruments but not that one). When I think of scoring for archaic or archaizing instruments, I think of course of Bach and the St. John Passion. In many ways, considering how little composers of the past looked into their own past, that is more astonishing than any more modern use of an antique instrument. I often wonder how Bach even knew what those instruments sounded like, let alone how to find someone in Leipzig who could still play one and was willing to do so.