SALZBURG, Austria – The storied festival in this town has presented a rare opera this season: “Die Gezeichneten,” by Franz Schreker. This composer – an Austrian whose father was Jewish – was prominent in the 1910s and 1920s, and died in 1934. His music was banned by the Nazis. For the last several seasons, the Salzburg Festival has been honoring such composers; it is in part an act of penance.

Schreker is largely unknown today, and that is not the fault of the Nazis: They fell from power 60 years ago. Dominant in musical affairs has been an establishment hostile to tonality and beauty – a scholar here described it as “a second dictatorship.” Schreker belongs to a group that includes Alexander Zemlinsky and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Their music has traditionally been dismissed as tuneful dreck, the last gasps of a Romanticism that needed to die. But these composers have slowly been gaining reacceptance; that second dictatorship, if not dead, is weakened.

“Die Gezeichneten” means “The Branded Ones,” or “The Marked Ones” – some people translate it “The Stigmatized.” Schreker wrote the libretto himself, and he crafted a remarkable tale: Alviano is a hunchback, and appalled by his ugliness. He is also a nobleman – a Genoese – with money to spare: He converts a nearby island into a temple of beauty. But his fellow nobles are using a secret grotto there for orgies, abducting the daughters of Genoa for the enterprise. They are also murdering these women. Alviano falls in love with Carlotta, a painter, who loves him back, briefly. But then Carlotta goes off with the handsome Tamare, chief of the criminal noblemen. Alviano discovers them, and stabs Tamare to death. Carlotta dies crying for her lover (not the hunchback). Alviano goes mad with grief. If “Tosca” is a “shabby little shocker,” as it was famously described, there are no words for this one.

Schreker’s music may put you in mind of Strauss, and it owes a lot to Wagner. This score is gentle, shimmering, seductive. It’s sprinkled with fairy dust. It is also dreamlike, lulling, entrancing. It may put you in mind of “Pelleas et Melisande,” as well. If more of the opera going public were exposed to this music, they would no doubt embrace it. Think how they welcome Korngold’s “Tote Stadt.”

Leading the final performance of “Die Gezeichneten” on Sunday afternoon was Kent Nagano, the California conductor. His orchestra was the German Symphony Orchestra of Berlin, of which he is artistic director. Mr. Nagano was never less than competent, sometimes touching a greater height. He might have wrung yet more beauty out of this score – but he avoided overindulgence, which was wise. The orchestra played with technical assurance and musical sensitivity.

At the head of the cast, as Alviano, was the American tenor Robert Brubaker, who did a fine job. He was somewhat workmanlike, and he experienced a little trouble at the top of his range, but he more than filled the bill. His diction was excellent, and his into nation reliable. Equally gratifying was his understanding of the role: Mr. Brubaker didn’t overact – which must have been tempting – but neither did he under act. At the end, Alviano was pitiably broken.

This role is a juicy, inviting one for tenor, and it practically owns the opera. Tenors the world over ought to covet it. They are not overrun with such roles.

The other tenor of the afternoon was the German Michael Volle, as Tamare. He was big-voiced and confident, a heroic villain. Dramatically, he was loutish, swaggering: the hateful fraternity president. His taunts of Alviano were terrible – appropriately terrible – and he died a fabulous death.

Scoring a musical and theatrical triumph was the Carlotta, the German soprano Anne Schwanewilms. She sang accurately and beautifully, with helpful understatement. This was unforced, lyrical singing, in a role quite friendly to the voice. Carlotta’s lines are relatively unstrenuous, but Ms. Schwanewilms sang a dynamite B. And she was transfixing as a kind of bitch-goddess. (She looked not unlike the actress Cameron Diaz, by the way. And Mr. Brubaker looked not unlike Kenneth Branagh.)

But enough about the cast, for we are in Europe, and on this continent the director rules. The director of this production was Nikolaus Lehnhoff, a veteran of the major opera houses. He made many revisions to “Die Gezeichneten,” cutting out characters, cutting out subplots. That is forgivable – this is a big, sprawling, complicated opera. But Mr. Lehnhoff took many other liberties as well. It’s one thing if you mess around with “Don Giovanni,” “Carmen,” or other operas we’ve all seen a hundred times. But none of us had ever seen “Die Gezeichneten.” Why not do it straight, just once, before beginning to mess around?

Alviano was not a hunchback; he was a cross-dresser. There was nothing Genoese about this production; it was stony, painfully modern. The noblemen were a leather-wearing mob – I think that was leather – who blew kisses. The final act featured throngs of bare breasted female zombies, which distracted from the music and the major characters. And the daughters of Genoa, taken off to the secret grotto? They were not young women; they were little girls, naked, shivering – raped, bloody. What, Schreker’s original wasn’t lurid enough? The kiddie stuff is par for the course at Salzburg: “La Clemenza di Tito” boasts little boys in underwear. At the conclusion of “Die Gezeichneten,” the little girls came out in white bathrobes, to take their bows. The audience cheered and cheered.

I quote the first line of the opera: “Enough, it disgusts me.”