The score of the opera, which formed the pattern for the many full-length Offenbach operas that followed, is described by Faris as having an "abundance of couplets" (songs with repeated verses for one or more singers), "a variety of other solos and duets, several big choruses, and two extended finales". Offenbach wrote in a variety of styles – from Rococo pastoral vein, via pastiche of Italian opera, to the uproarious galop – displaying, in Faris's analysis, many of his personal hallmarks, such as melodies that "leap backwards and forwards in a remarkably acrobatic manner while still sounding not only smoothly lyrical, but spontaneous as well". In such up-tempo numbers as the "Galop infernal", Offenbach makes a virtue of simplicity, often keeping to the same key through most of the number, with largely unvarying instrumentation throughout. Elsewhere in the score Offenbach gives the orchestra greater prominence. In the "duo de la mouche" Jupiter's part, consisting of buzzing like a fly, is accompanied by the first and second violins playing sul ponticello, to produce a similarly buzzing sound. In "Le Figaro", Gustave Lafargue remarked that Offenbach's use of a piccolo trill punctuated by a tap on a cymbal in the finale of the first scene was a modern recreation of an effect invented by Gluck in his score of "Iphigénie en Aulide". Wilfrid Mellers also remarks on Offenbach's use of the piccolo to enhance Eurydice's couplets with "girlish giggles" on the instrument. Gervase Hughes comments on the elaborate scoring of the "ballet des mouches" 3, 1874 version, and calls it "a "tour de force"" that could have inspired Tchaikovsky.