It is nearly 40 years since EMI released its classic recording of Guillaume Tell, Rossini’s epic final opera; every note of it, in the original language with a largely Francophone cast headed by Gabriel Bacquier, Nicolai Gedda and Montserrat Caballé. The recording, which still sounds well on its budget-price four-CD reissue, was of particular importance, not least because the work had rarely received its due since its spectacularly staged premiere at the Paris Opéra in 1829.

There has never been any insuperable problem with the text. The original Eugène Troupenas edition (on which an admiring Hector Berlioz worked as a proof reader) is a plausible basis for any production of the opera, though since the completion of Elizabeth Bartlet’s critical edition we know more about the many small emendations that were made at the time of the original staging which were not incorporated into the Troupenas edition. There is a particularly nice example in the new Pappano recording when the chorus returns at the end of the “Tyrolienne” before the apple shooting.

Not that such niceties are of great moment in a recording that cuts some 25 minutes from the opera, much of it in Act 4, where the women’s Trio and subsequent Prayer are summarily removed. Such cuts are commonplace in the theatre, as we can hear on Fabio Luisi’s eloquently conducted live 1998 Vienna State Opera production, the house’s first French-language Tell. But why on a major new recording where the third and final CD runs for a mere 55 minutes?

The answer, it seems, is that the recording, far from being the project’s raison d’être, is essentially a commercial spin-off of the concert performances that have been taking place in Rome and London over the past year. And a somewhat casually produced spin-off it is too, with singers and even occasionally the chorus often disadvantaged by less than helpful microphone placings and a curious “Is it live or isn’t it?” situation where the random inclusion of applause is concerned.

Collectors may want to hear the set for Gerald Finley’s quietly authoritative Tell and for John Osborn’s eloquent and affecting Arnold, small-scale by post-1830 standards but beautifully tailored and expertly sung. There is also an exceptional Jemmy from Elena Xanthoudakis. Malin Byström’s Mathilde, alas, is no match for Caballé or for Mirella Freni on the unauthentically Italian, but none the less superbly theatrical, 1979 Chailly recording with Milnes and Pavarotti in stellar support.

After a musically distinguished Rossini Stabat mater, Pappano’s conducting disappoints. Tempi are inconsistent, some too slow, others too fast, in a performance where the most vivid conducting appears to be reserved for those passages where the prominently placed but rather dryly recorded orchestra moves centre stage.