It would appear at first glance that the release of this recording of one of Rossini’s more egregious operas has been primarily designed as a promotional exercise for the conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson. How else does one explain that hers is the only artist biography in the 36-page German-English booklet?

She is good. But the singers are good too: an exceptional cast to be assembled for a Sunday radio transmission. But that’s Germany for you, the one country in Europe which still has the desire and the wherewithal seriously to invest in opera.

Singing Rossini live under a skilled if sometimes hard-driving conductor is not without its perils, as is occasionally evident with the one soprano in the cast, the gifted Hera Hyesang Park (Rosina in this year’s Glyndebourne revival of Rossini’s Il barbiere), who sings the role of the exiled wife of the delusional Polish king Sigismondo. But she, too, generally acquits herself with distinction, not least in Aldimira’s striking Act 2 aria.

Sigismondo, an old-fashioned travesti role, is sung by Marianna Pizzolato. Both she and Kenneth Tarver as the king’s devious and sexually ambitious Prime Minister – remind you of anyone? – are class acts. It’s also good to hear the young Irish mezzo Rachel Kelly in the comprimario role of the minister’s sister, Anagilda.

Keri-Lynn Wilson – or Mrs Peter Gelb as one’s probably not allowed to call her – is an experienced conductor who has worked in leading houses across the world, including the Royal Opera House (a recent Carmen) and the London Coliseum, where her conducting of Aida was admired. Here the drive and authority of her conducting work wonders for the piece. I like the way she rescues the Overture (reused by Rossini in revised form for Otello in Naples in 1816) from buffo banality by giving it a rumbustious, even dangerous feel. I also like the way the performance culminates in an electrifying account of the Act 2 quartet. Identifying and realising any work’s one true climax is a skill that eludes all too many stick-wavers.

Rossini wrote Sigismondo for Venice’s Teatro La Fenice in the autumn of 1814. He was 22 and on the cusp of a move to Naples and the second great phase of his career. The impresario of La Fenice warned him that the libretto wasn’t up to much and Rossini seems to have agreed. Still, he set to and came up with some vital and at times forward-looking music that had the singular merit of appeasing the first-night audience.

Which is why it doesn’t perhaps matter that BR-Klassik has been negligent in its presentation – no text and translation, such as one has with Bongiovanni’s highly recommendable 1992 Rovigo theatre recording conducted by Richard Bonynge, nor the kind of track-by-track synopsis such as Naxos provides in its altogether less well-sung and less efficiently recorded 2016 Rossini in Wildbad performance.

Put on the discs, forget the plot and enjoy the music would be my advice. True, no self-respecting Gramophone subscriber would wish to morph into a vacuous-minded dilettante. But Rossini would have understood your problem and – dare I say it? – recognised your pain.