Independent Opera returns to Sadler’s Wells, London, to present the first UK production of Austrian-Czech composer Šimon Voseček’s opera, based on a 1953 play by Max Frisch usually known in English as The Fire Raisers. Voseček’s dark comedy version – to his own libretto, here sung in David Pountney’s sharp translation – debuted in Vienna two years ago. It’s a resoundingly clever, brilliantly written piece that makes its mark musically and theatrically.

Voseček’s chamber work is scored for 15-piece ensemble – here the pristine Britten Sinfonia under the eagle-eyed baton of Timothy Redmond – with a preponderance of clarinets, trombones and percussion giving its soundworld an abrasive edge. Convulsively pacy, the work plays for an intense 90 minutes, driven by a winning combination of menace and brittle musical wit.

Jemima Robinson’s set shows us the Biedermanns’ comfortable home, with its tasteful artwork and flowing bottles of good wine. Max Hoehn’s staging identifies precisely the piece’s essential ambiguity of tone.

Mark Le Brocq emphasises Biedermann’s pusillanimous nature. Alinka Kozári presents his trophy wife, Babette, as an ideally well-behaved spouse, while Raphaela Papadakis suggests their maid Anna’s rebellious tendencies. Leigh Melrose plays the muscle-suited Schmitz as an affable psychopath, while Matthew Hargreaves as fellow criminal Eisenring seems alternately more lairy and more accommodating. Adam Sullivan, Johnny Herford and Bradley Travis are the three angelically winged firemen whose warnings of flaming disaster are unheeded.

• At Lilian Baylis studio, London, on 19 November. Box office: 020-8763 8000.