On March 18 and 19, at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, the Center for Contemporary Opera (CCO), directed by Jim Schaeffer, presented the world premiere performances of “The Secret Agent,” by composer-in-residence Michael Dellaira and librettist and poet J.D. (Sandy) McClatchy, after Joseph Conrad’s novel of the same name, first published in serialized form in the American journal Ridgeway’s: A Militant Weekly for God and Country in 1906 and as a book, in England, by Methuen, in 1907, and on his dramatization of it, which had a run in London in 1922. Anarchy and skullduggery, intrigue and a bombing gone awry—pertinent in this era when international terrorism and suicide bombings regularly make the news—are elements of this work, written in a contemporary, mostly conversational idiom—in the tradition of “Makropulos Affair,” “From the House of the Dead,” “Wozzeck” and “Pelléas et Mélisande”—its music urgent, agitated and intense, with occasional lyrical interludes. As an indication of the mood that Dellaira and McClatchy’s “Secret Agent” successfully created, when someone dropped a glass bottle in the row behind this reviewer, on the second night, the one discussed here, it gave listeners a start.

Playing perhaps the only sympathetic characters in the opera, though one murders her husband and the other tries to blow up the Royal Greenwich Observatory, were lyric soprano Amy Burton, as Winnie Verloc, who bears the proverbial weight of the world on her shoulders, and lyric tenor Jonathan Blalock, as her childlike and basically good-hearted brother, Stevie, who, in his own inarticulate way, expresses sympathy with the poor. With Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, and New York Festival of Song performances among her credits, Burton, as Winnie, sweetly sang the traditional “All Through the Night,” as a lullaby to her troubled brother, and proved gripping in her “Why am I afraid to die with my poor Stevie dead?,” essentially her ‘mad scene,’ after Stevie, a pawn of the anarchists, has perished in his botched bombing attempt and Winnie has, in retaliation, in a moment that brought “Tosca” to mind, stabbed her husband, Adolf, the secret agent of the title.

Scott Bearden brought a formidable baritone and presence to the role of Adolf Verloc, a double agent in the service of the German Embassy and the British police, and purveyor of pornography as a cover for his activity as a spy, whose simple brother-in-law winds up with the bomb that he was to detonate. As the anarchists Verloc is to report on, who, with him, come off as a sort of ‘gang that couldn’t shoot straight,’ expressive bass Matt Boehler, as the Professor, provided the material for the bomb, aired his philosophy, “I depend on death,” in a solo that showed off a skillful quiet head voice, and stripped to the waist, as the climax to Act One, and fingered the bomb he always wore draped across his chest; tenor Matthew Garrett, as the no-less-shady Ossipon, lent his lyric instrument to suggesting that susceptible Stevie could be manipulated for their louche purposes, and to wooing the desperate Winnie in order to bilk her of all the Verlocs’ savings; and baritone Aaron Theno, as a low-key Michaelis, worked his status as an ex-convict to gain the good graces of a titled protector and thence entry to fancy balls and salons. Jason Papowitz, singing the role of Chief Inspector Heat in a polished tenor, astutely echoed Winnie’s assertion about “[b]lood and dirt,” which, he sang, is what “[a]ll you terrorists” amount to.

Mezzo-soprano Jodi Karem was Lady Mabel, Michaelis’ sponsor, who led Deborah Lifton, Kate Oberjat, Sarah Miller and Cherry Duke, as her anarchist ‘groupie’ friends, in an ensemble based on the melody of Schubert’s “Erlkönig.” Nathan Resika, Andrew Cummings, Mark Zuckerman, and David Neal took the other roles.

Conductor Sara Jobin and director Sam Helfrich effectively guided the company in making the new opera achieve its impact. Helfrich ensured that the players made full use of Laura Jellinek’s multi-level set, dotted with archival photos of anarchists and images from the French postcards Verloc sells, with the Embassy ballroom and Scotland Yard above and hardscrabble gritty underground—the Verloc dining room and what seemed to the morgue—below. Melissa Schlachtmeyer designed the costumes and Eric Southern, the lighting.

CCO, which received a $100,000 grant this month from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop new opera and music theater works, will bring “The Secret Agent” to the National Theater of Györ for the Armel Opera Festival, in Hungary, on October 14, when it will be broadcast live throughout Europe. Also on tap are composer Daniel Asia and librettist Paul Pines’ “The Tin Angel,” on April 21 and 22 at 8 p.m., and “Rope and Chasm” by Matthew Greenbaum and “Archimides” by James Dashow, on May 27, at 8 p.m. Visit www.centerforcontemporaryopera.org for further details.