Both were unchallengeably qualified to explore culturally the horrors of that time. The Passenger, whose UK première, directed by David Pountney, complements his searing world-première stagings in Bregenz (Austria) and Warsaw, is a work that we should approach with the utmost respect, though not uncritically.

Weinberg, despite censorship, was (as Moishe Vainberg) an honoured Soviet composer — of symphonies, concertos, and chamber music — and a close friend of Shostakovich. Much of his music is of superlative quality. He viewed The Passenger (several of his operas explore war and alienation) as his best. Shostakovich thought it a masterpiece. ENO’s fabulously well-presented production shows it to be a work of power, passion, and substance.

The slightly variable libretto focuses on a putative chance encounter between a former Auschwitz SS guard and a camp inmate, aboard an ocean liner around 1960. The guard, Annaliese Franz, sung with wonderful feeling and ironic awareness by the South African-born mezzo-soprano Michelle Breedt, has concealed her past from her husband, a West German diplomat heading for a posting abroad, until she sees among the passengers, all white-costumed, a veiled apparition whom she believes to be a Polish girl she favoured when, aged just 22, she was a camp overseer.

In the murky, cavernous, Wagnerian sub-world below (the brilliantly conceived split stage was designed by Johan Engels), where railway tracks ominously terminate and trains convert into louse-ridden cramped bunks, the girls we meet, all wonderfully characterised and sung, struggle to survive. Marta, the caring 19-year-old heroine (Giselle Allen, a performer who recalls Dame Josephine Barstow’s wonderfully vocal qualities), resists her guard’s blandishments, till her boyfriend Tadeusz (Leigh Melrose; their love scene and Marta’s epilogue provide the opera’s most alluring set pieces), a violinist who dares to play Bach before the SS Kommandant when a banal waltz is ordered, perishes — splintering any lingering respect she had preserved for authority.

Weinberg’s music reveals his eclectic ingenuity, which was daring for his time. He often employed a rich, late-romantic style, but here we encounter a restless fusion that reflects the date of composition (1967-68). Thinly scored, 1930s-cum-1950s modernistic effects abound. Saxophone, bass clarinet, and celesta lend colouring. His effects are painterly, not gimmicky; and any Jewish influence is detailed with a light touch. There are numerous echoes or anticipations of Britten; the string writing is superb.

Tenor Kim Begley, who sings the compromised diplomat, has one of the most gorgeous and uplifting voices in English opera today; he is a worthy successor to the late Robert Tear. Sir Richard Armstrong chased out numerous subtle shades from Weinberg’s diaphanous music; and the ENO’s orchestra delivered superbly.

Helped by impeccable lighting and spotlighting, David Pountney’s production — he excels in lugubrious parades of this kind — touched all the right nerves: the sure hand of a master-craftsman.

At English National Opera, The London Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, London WC2, tonight, and on 13, 15, 22, and 25 October. Box office: phone 0871 911 0200. www.eno.org