Richard Bonynge turned 90 last September, an anniversary marked by the release of this set of his complete ballet recordings (though it actually contains considerably more than that) made for Decca between 1962 and 1995. Bonynge is, of course, best known for his re-evaluation of the Italian bel canto and 19th-century French operatic repertories, undertaken in partnership with his wife, Joan Sutherland. On his own, however, he developed a parallel interest in ballet music, committing to disc more than 20 scores written or arranged for dance, together with multiple albums of extracts, divertissements and pas de deux.

Decca, meanwhile, has also added ballet music from some of his opera recordings (Faust, La favorita, Le roi de Lahore and the Trovatore ballet Verdi provided for the 1855 Paris production, which Bonynge inserted into his 1976 recording of the Italian original). There are orchestral suites by Massenet, two albums of opera overtures and even a group of rarely heard cello concertos (by Massenet, Auber and David Popper, a member of Liszt’s circle) recorded with Jascha Silberstein and the Suisse Romande Orchestra in 1971.

Bonynge’s approach to ballet was characterised by the same scholarly passion that informs his opera performances, though he was similarly circumspect in what he tackled, limiting himself to music from the 19th century, even if it was not used for ballet until the 20th. Focusing on the French and Russian repertories, he gave us the core classics – Adam’s Giselle (twice), Delibes’s Coppélia (again twice) and Sylvia, the three Tchaikovsky ballets – along with lesser- or little-known works that enrich our understanding of both the achievements of the ballet composers of the period and the historical context which informs them.

So Giselle (1841) can be compared not only with Adam’s other ballets but also with Friedrich Burgmüller’s La péri (1843), both choreographed by Jean Coralli to supernatural scenarios by Théophile Gautier as vehicles for the ballerina Carlotta Grisi. Delibes’s La source (1866) was co-composed with Ludwig Minkus, whose music can sometimes be routine, though Bonynge recorded the work complete, unlike most conductors who jettison Minkus’s contribution altogether. Delibes’s influence on Tchaikovsky (who thought Swan Lake inferior to Sylvia) is well known, but Bonynge’s recordings of important, albeit uneven works by other composers for the Imperial Russian ballet, such as Minkus’s La bayadère (1877) and Riccardo Drigo’s La flûte magique (1893 – the plot has nothing to do with Mozart), serve as reminders of the formal constraints, choreographic as well as musical, within which Tchaikovsky worked.

For the classics, Bonynge reverted to original editions rather than using the now prevalent theatre scores that evolved over time as a result of the need to revise, re-choreograph or insert scenes or dances for successive casts or star performers. So both his recordings of Giselle give us the ballet as it was heard at its premiere, with the bulk of the music by Adam, but also including Burgmüller’s ‘Peasant pas de deux’, worked up at the last minute from the latter’s Souvenirs de Ratisbonne as a display piece for the ballerina Nathalie Fitzjames. The ballet’s orchestration had also been revamped over time, most notably by the composer-conductor Henri Büsser, though Bonynge reverts to Adam’s and Burgmüller’s original scoring.

His first Giselle, made in 1967 with the Monte-Carlo Opera Orchestra, remains remarkable, a grippingly theatrical account, generating real gothic frissons in the haunted second act, where Adam’s debt to Weber’s Der Freischütz is more than once apparent. The 1986 remake, in digital sound with the Royal Opera House Orchestra, is more securely played – the Monte-Carlo woodwind on occasion leave something to be desired – but also more relaxed in terms of tempo and pacing, lacking some of the intensity of its predecessor.

Bonynge’s two recordings of Delibes’s Coppélia elicit similar responses. The first, from 1969 with the Suisse Romande, is the finest version on disc, beautifully paced and shaped, played with superb finesse and a wonderfully authentic French sound. The second (1984) employs the National Philharmonic, founded as a recording orchestra in 1964 (originally as the RCA Victor Symphony), with which Bonynge worked regularly throughout his career. The performance, however, is less incisive, the playing less brilliant, the digital recording squeaky-clean but chilly when placed beside the warmer analogue version.

The National Philharmonic was also Bonynge’s orchestra for his Tchaikovsky cycle. The Nutcracker (1974) lacks something of Ernest Ansermet’s magic (Decca) or Valery Gergiev’s greater drive (Philips), though Bonynge’s Swan Lake, made the following year, is outstanding. Like many conductors on record, Bonynge uses the original 1877 version (rather than the 1895 Drigo reworking nowadays heard in the theatre), which comes uber-complete with the addition of the Act 3 pas de deux that Tchaikovsky added at the insistence of the ballerina Olga Sobeshchanskaya, the score of which only came to light in 1953. As with his first Giselle, the work’s gothicism is very much to the fore: the melancholy mood is immaculately sustained, tipping into near-nightmare with Rothbart and Odile’s terrifying first appearance at the Act 3 ball, and reaching genuinely tragic heights in the final scenes. It’s a tremendous performance, almost equalled by Bonynge’s 1977 Sleeping Beauty, magisterial and grand in its splendour, and quite ravishingly played.

Bonynge’s re-examination of little-known ballets, meanwhile, began in 1964 with Adam’s Le diable à quatre, a pointed comedy about two women – one aristocratic and ill-tempered, the other poor but sweet-natured – forced by supernatural intervention to change places for a day. Not everyone will agree with the much-voiced argument that he unearthed a finer score than Giselle, though it is a work of great wit and elegance, performed with wonderful panache by the LSO.

There were to be more rediscoveries over the years. Bonynge recorded Offenbach’s only ballet Le papillon early in 1972, following it with Auber’s Marco Spada later the same year, again both with the LSO. Offenbach’s slightly sinister fairy tale has bags of charm and a notably beautiful climactic pas de deux. Marco Spada follows the same narrative as one of Auber’s operas and draws its music from 10 others. It’s rip-roaringly good, and after the recording’s eventual release in 1975, the dancer Pierre Lacotte choreographed a new staging for Rudolf Nureyev, first seen in Rome in 1981. Bonynge’s recordings of Massenet’s two stand-alone ballets, Cigale and Le carillon with the National Philharmonic, date from 1978 and 1983 respectively. The former, based on La Fontaine’s La cigale et la fourmi (‘The grasshopper and the ant’) is the finer of the two; Le carillon, grander in scale, is arguably less effective, though both performances are beautifully focused.

Nowadays, however, the best-known ballet to Massenet’s music is Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon (1974), danced to arrangements by Leighton Lucas of extracts from the composer’s operas, oratorios and orchestral works, including substantial passages from the Scènes alsaciennes and Scènes dramatiques. The latter are heard here complete in high-powered performances from 1975: Bonynge’s account of the Massenet/Lucas ballet (1985 with the ROH Orchestra) is sensual and dramatic, if a bit hard driven.

Manon is one of several scores included here that are effectively pasticcios of earlier material, many of them more familiar at the time of recording than they are now. The Rossini-Respighi La boutique fantasque gets a performance from the National Philharmonic that is wonderfully crisp and energetic but doesn’t quite have the sparkle of René Leibowitz’s famous recording with the London Philharmonic. I have fond memories of seeing Massine’s lovely Mam’zelle Angot as a teenager, danced to numbers from Lecocq’s operetta La fille de Madame Angot arranged by Gordon Jacob; Bonynge gives us the ballet complete, though Jacob’s rescoring of the operetta’s overture comes over as brash when placed beside Lecocq’s original, which Bonynge includes on his ‘French Opera Overtures’ disc.

You have to take the rough along with the smooth at times, though there are also pleasures and surprises along the way. Some of the music is frankly uneven: La bayadère sounds much more interesting than I’ve ever experienced it in the theatre but still palls without Petipa’s extraordinary choreography. Drigo’s music, on the other hand, struck me as utterly enchanting. La flûte magique is a delightful work, as is Le réveil de flore, which Bonynge includes in a two-disc set of music associated with Anna Pavlova. Drigo is probably best known for the pas de deux from Le corsaire, an insertion piece, in fact, for a 1899 St Petersburg production of Adam’s final (1856) ballet: Bonynge recorded the latter in 1990, omitting the Drigo, though it gets a terrific performance on his 1964 ‘Pas de deux’ album, where it sounds sexy and very grand.

You could also argue that there are some omissions. Lalo’s Namouna is notably absent from a set that otherwise serves the 19th-century French ballet repertory uncommonly well. And I would also have liked Bonynge to have complemented his Tchaikovsky cycle with Glazunov’s Raymonda, the last of the great imperial Russian ballets to be premiered before Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes changed the history of dance and its music for ever. Even so, this is a wonderful set, selling for about £120, that asks us to reconsider Bonynge’s achievement afresh, and to re-examine aspects of his scholarship and artistry that many have neglected in favour of his opera recordings. Highly recommended.