Stephen Batura had no doubt that a 30-by-25-foot mural would be a massive challenge.
“I knew it was just going to be Moby Dick up there, trying to conquer this big white canvas,” said the Denver painter.
But Batura did not grasp the full enormity of the project until he saw the blank canvas mounted on a temporary wall backstage in the theater of the old Elitch Gardens near West 38th Avenue and Tennyson Street.
“When we finally got it up there,” he said, “then it hit me – wow, how hard it was going to be to handle.”
He received a $216,000 commission last year to create the giant painting for the lobby of the new Ellie Caulkins Opera House under the guidelines of Denver’s 1 percent-for-art ordinance, which requires that 1 percent of any public building’s budget be devoted to art.
With a kind of multilevel, altered perspective, the mural, titled “The Rehearsal,” depicts everything that happens in advance of an opera performance, from the myriad backstage preparations to the arrival of the patrons.
Batura had originally intended to include 40 figures in the sprawling composition, but that number has grown to nearly 200, including 13 people who made contributions to Opera Colorado to get images of themselves included in the painting.
At the top and sides of the painting is a depiction of the original red stage curtain in the Auditorium Theatre, the 97-year old building that was gutted to make way for the opera house. Crowned at the top is the a crest with the letters DA, which stood for Denver Auditorium.
Batura had hoped to finish the project for the building’s Sept. 10 opening, but it has taken longer than he originally projected. He is now well beyond halfway and would like to have it installed before the Nov. 3 debut of “Carmen,” but he is not making any guarantees.
“I have to apply the same mentality to it that I apply to my other work so I get it right,” he said.
