From arts leaders and government officials to architects and construction workers, hundreds of people have been involved in the past decade or so with the realization of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. Here is a glimpse at some of the key participants:
For much of her life, Ellie Caulkins couldn’t stand opera, perceiving it as “screeching and awful.”
But in the early 1970s, she took an opera-appreciation class at the University of Colorado at Denver, and her view changed completely. She became not just a fan but an ardent champion of the formÑlocally and nationallyÑas a volunteer and patron.
She has served as president of the Metropolitan Opera National Council and is a member of the New York company’s board. Closer to home, Caulkins chaired Opera Colorado’s board off and on for seven years; she now holds the title of lifetime honorary chairwoman.
“She is Denver’s connection to the national and international opera world,” said Jack Finlaw, director of Denver’s Division of Theatres and Arenas. “She sits on the board of the Metropolitan Opera, and she is personally involved in friendships with many of the great opera singers in the world.”
Caulkins’ family surprised her in January 2004 by securing her name on the facility with a $7 million donation. She still doesn’t know how she feels about the honor.
“I alternate between terrifically embarrassed and absolutely thrilled and excited,” she said.
As chairman of Opera Colorado’s board in 2001-03, Jack Finlaw lobbied for the $25 million bond issue for the Caulkins Opera House and stood on street corners waving placards supporting its passage.
But his most important role in the building’s realization did not come until September 2003, when Mayor John Hickenlooper appointed him director of the city’s Division of Theatres and Arenas.
In that position, he immediately became what he calls “chief executive” of the construction team, keeping the project on time and on budget and raising nearly $10 million in private support.
“I think Jack has been key to all of this, not just raising the money but overseeing so many facets of this without micromanaging the project,” Caulkins said. “I can’t imagine that this all could have done the way it was without Jack Finlaw. He is extraordinary.”
As executive director of Opera Colorado in 1997-2001, Stephen Seifert concluded that if the company were to grow and improve, it needed a viable place to perform.
After much research, he and other leaders of the company saw a transformed Auditorium Theatre as the best opportunity. Seifert spearheaded efforts to get it renovated.
After leaving the opera, Seifert led the establishment of the Friends of Denver’s Historic Auditorium Theatre in 2001. He oversaw the advocacy organization’s day-to-day operations and raised more than $470,000 for the bond campaign.
“He was the one who kept us going, kept us on track, kept us on mission to get the political figures in town to endorse this,” Finlaw said. “He was the one who was able to stand up in front of a City Council committee and say why this was important to Denver.”
Jeremy and Susan Shamos have been longtime opera fans and contributors. But Jeremy never took his involvement any further until his wife, an Opera Colorado board member since 1998, asked him to substitute for her at a Friends meeting.
“One thing led to another, and within a week or 10 days, for various complicated reasons, I wound up as president of the Friends of the Auditorium and sort of leading the fight to get the issue on the ballot and to get the bond issue passed,” Jeremy Shamos said.
The couple, who were elected Opera Colorado’s board co-chairs in 2003, donated $120,000 to the company. And with the Shamoses’ encouragement, it in turn donated the money to the FriendsÑthe largest single gift to the advocacy group.
“The investment that Jeremy and Susan put in both in terms of their money and their time and leadership as community representatives was just absolutely essential to getting this done,” Seifert said.
In May 2002, Wellington Webb was still feeling the sting of the voters’ rejection the previous November of a proposal to build a $300 million jail at 701 Osage St., near Interstate 25 and West Sixth Avenue.
That did not stop him from taking the stage of the Auditorium Theatre (renamed a few weeks earlier in honor of former Mayor Quigg Newton) at a news conference to endorse a $25 million bond issue as part of a funding package to overhaul the facility.
He helped secure approval for the renovation plan from City Council and campaigned for the bond issue’s passage. After work began on the project in May 2003, Webb’s term ended and he had to leave its completion to his successor.
“Mayors’ terms are linear,” Webb said. “Every mayor that succeeds another mayor ends up finishing some of their projects. The same way that Federico (Pe-a) started the airport and I finished it, there would be many projects that I started that John (Hickenlooper) will finish. The Caulkins-Quigg Newton is one.”
Nobody has been more the public face for the Caulkins Opera House than Chris Wineman, a principal who handles communication and business development for Semple Brown Design, the architectural firm designing the facility.
He helped the public understand what the facility could be when it was under consideration. More recently, he has led at least 60 hard-hat tours of the facility for supporters and donors not only to the project but also the arts groups that will perform there.
“Years ago, when this was just a dream in people’s mind, Chris would show up at any meeting of any performing arts group, any political action group, anybody who wanted to know what this could become,” Finlaw said.
“Chris was there to tell the story. He really was a salesman for this and was the one who got everybody excited, and got people to dream about what this could be.”
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Meg Loucks | The Denver Post
Jack Finlaw, left, oversaw construction; Stephen Seifert spearheaded renovation; and Chris Wineman communicated a vision.
