Stormy waves on which seagulls seem to be surfing, a surging up and down that threatens to engulf everything.

But then there is a sudden cut in the video, which is projected across the stage: A tempting red sunrise is reflected in the turquoise water.

But what looks like a summery beach idyll with a rowing boat quickly turns out to be horror, because Captain Enoch Arden ends up lonely on a desolate island after a shipwreck.

Roland Geyer, who as artistic director had steered the fortunes of the Theater an der Wien for sixteen years and was responsible for 197 premieres, dramaturgically rearranged the strictly linear story in Ottmar Gerster's 1936 opera "Enoch Arden", leaving the stranded captain in feverish dreams Review life again.

The videos by director David Haneke effectively support these flashbacks and also go well with the music of the folk artist Gerster, who emigrated to the GDR in 1947 and whose largely tonal work aims to be easy to understand.

Made-to-measure farewell performance

Originally planned for the 2019/20 season, the premiere had to be moved to the small chamber opera, which has been affiliated with the Theater an der Wien since 2012, due to the pandemic.

Because the big building has been undergoing a general renovation since April, so that the new director, Stefan Herheim, will probably not be able to return to the main building until autumn 2024.

For Geyer, however, his farewell performance was tailor-made and offers the opportunity to retrospectively appreciate his work.

When the trained mathematician and EDP specialist rose in 2004 from music director of the city of Vienna to head of the Theater an der Wien, which was newly founded as a stagione opera, contemporary music theater could only be seen very selectively in Austria's capital.

Although Ioan Holender managed to produce a few coherent, modern productions in the final phase of his directorship at the Vienna State Opera, the renowned house was far from having a dramaturgically well thought-out repertoire.

When Dominique Meyer took over the Staatsoper in autumn 2010, the wheel of performance history was turned back even further.

The same applies to the Volksoper, which has not been able to develop a profile under the direction of Robert Meyer since 2010.

What has been happening at the Theater an der Wien since the 2006/07 season was therefore important for the city in two respects: on the one hand, the opera audience can finally see productions by important contemporary directors, on the other hand, with the establishment of the new Stagione-Theater, longer Rehearsal times raised the level - despite significantly lower budgetary resources than those of the state theaters.

With the RSO-Vienna, the Wiener Symphoniker and the Concentus musicus, well-known orchestras are also regular guests at the Theater an der Wien.

In addition, Geyer was able to convince the audience with coherent game plans, which were essentially based on three pillars: one was baroque opera and staged oratorios.

The productions by Claus Guth, who found gripping theatrical solutions for Franz Schubert's "Lazarus" (2013) and Georg Friedrich Handel's "Saul" (2018), are particularly noteworthy here.

The second pillar consisted of unjustly forgotten rarities of the opera business, such as Antonio Salieri's "Falstaff ossia Le tre burle" (2016 under René Jacobs) or Heinrich Marschner's "Hans Heiling" (2015 under Constantin Trinks).

Scenic concepts and musical solutions

The third pillar of the directorship was modernity.

As early as 2006, in the Mozart year, Bernhard Lang's cheeky musical theater piece "I hate Mozart", based on collages of well-known motifs and arias from Wolfgang Amadé Mozart's operas, was premiered.

Mozart with turntables and orchestra - it doesn't get any more contemporary than that.

A total of thirteen premieres and six Austrian premieres of contemporary operas were performed under Geyer's aegis at the Theater an der Wien.

These include Johannes Kalitzke's "The Besessenten" (2010), Lera Auerbach's "Gogol" (2011), Olga Neuwirth's "American Lulu" (2014) and most recently Christian Jost's "Egmont" (2020).

In order to convince the audience with such ambitious schedules, coherent scenic concepts and musically convincing solutions are required.

Geyer was not always able to make the right choice, but overall it was of course also the artists to whom the success of his house is to be thanked.

Two directors, who have made several guest appearances, are representative of their most important works: Robert Carsen, who brought Jean-Philippe Rameau's "Platée" to the stage in a lively and burlesque manner in 2014, and Christof Loy, whose coherent interpretation of Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes In 2016 he received the International Opera Award for the best new production of the year.

The musical highlight of the Geyer era is undoubtedly due to Nikolaus Harnoncourt: in 2014 he was able to use his Concentus musicus for the Mozart/da Ponte trilogy for the first time, and lo and behold: the sound speech was so present that even the secret desires and longings of the protagonists became audible , even if they verbally swore otherwise.

As in Salzburg, when he discovered Anna Netrebko as Donna Anna, Harnoncourt relied on an ensemble that was still unknown at the time.

The Norwegian Mari Eriksmoen and the South Tyrolean Andrè Schuen have meanwhile made international careers.

Which brings us back to the Viennese Chamber Opera, because Geyer's work with young talents, who built up an ensemble of six young singers in the small house, is also worth listening to.

As the wife of Enoch Arden, Valentina Petraeva cut a promising figure alongside the experienced Markus Butter in the title role.

Geyer has also equipped his theater ship for the future.