Crispian St. Peters notwithstanding, many of composer George Benjamin’s generation in Britain learned the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin Town from Robert Browning. On Thursday evening, the Lincoln Center Festival mounted Mr. Benjamin’s chamber opera version at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.

Martin Crimp’s libretto for “Into the Little Hill” is disappointingly heavy-handed in its political message, although that message is refreshingly anti-atheist and delightfully pro-rat (the evil adults want to kill all of the rodents, while the soon-to-be-martyred children protest). Mr. Benjamin, in fashioning his cautionary tale about the frighteningly destructive potential of music, wisely chooses to avoid the cliché, not making the flutist the avatar of enchantment. He does, however, employ the exotic bass flute as a centerpiece of some of the most kaleidoscopically interesting instrumental music heard in quite some time.

Mr. Benjamin studied with Olivier Messiaen and, like Pierre Boulez, another of the French master’s students from an earlier era, eschews the concept of development, of progressing from point A to point B, in favor of the sensual composition of the individual sonic moment. “Into the Little Hill” contains many of these auditory delights.

The harmonic language is surprisingly tame for a work written in 2006. One section that featured the mandolin of Patrizia Pacozzi utilizes direct quotes from one of the Five Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 10 of Anton Webern, music that is fast approaching its 100th birthday. Mr. Benjamin employs klangfarbenmelodie — painting in tones — and the results are spectacular.

Although the instrumental lines are fascinating, the vocal lines are much less so. The two singers were fine, but were not granted nearly as interesting music to put forth. Without a score it was difficult to know if soprano Anu Komsi was always on pitch. Were her wayward notes intentional? Contralto Hilary Summers possessed a solid command of a remarkable voice, but her attempts to intone a different inflection or timbre for each of her characters smacked a bit too much of amateur dramatics for my taste.

The Ensemble Modern of Frankfurt, under conductor Franck Ollu, did a superb job, its members beginning the proceedings with two short chamber pieces by Mr. Benjamin. Is it too obvious to mention that Viola, Viola is scored for two violas? In any case, Garth Knox and Genevieve Strosser navigated these treacherous waters with apparent ease. Again the vocabulary is Second Viennese, but much later than the Webernesque rumblings of the opera. The String trio of Arnold Schoenberg, which he wrote after facing his own mortality at a Los Angeles hospital, was often in the ear. Jagdish Mistry performed Three Miniatures for violin solo, a much more Romantic work that unfortunately ends in the same pizzicato vein as the viola piece, giving the impression that Mr. Benjamin’s music all sounds the same.

The production was minimally staged by Daniel Jeanneteau on a stage covered in wood chips, presumably to make the imaginary rats feel comfortable. The lighting designed by Marie-Christine Soma was harsh and constantly irritating, akin to the bright bulbs used during an interrogation (at least Hollywood’s version of such an event). The singers and musicians had their backs to the invasive glow throughout, but the audience often had to squint to see properly.

There are many versions of the Pied Piper story, including those that refer allegorically to the Children’s Crusade, but in Browning’s the children go off to Transylvania to form the Gypsy race. Could this be the reason that Mr. Benjamin features the cimbalom in his orchestra?