Nathaniel Merrill, opera pioneer

By Marc Shulgold, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 10, 2008 at 11 p.m.

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Nathaniel Merrill built a world-class opera company, Opera Colorado, in Denver.

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CORRECTION: This obituary should have said Nathaniel Merrill's widow's maiden name was Pamela Meyers. Also, the ZIP code for donations sent to Opera Colorado is 80246.

Like an old-time pioneer leaving the big city to seek his fortune out west, Nathaniel Merrill gave up a brilliant career as resident stage director at the Metropolitan Opera and came to Denver in the early '80s to make history.

Against all odds, he built a world-class opera company in a city that previously had struggled to sustain a regional one.

Mr. Merrill died on Tuesday at 81 of complications from Alzheimer's disease. But Opera Colorado, the company he created and directed, lives on.

"If it hadn't been for him and Louise (Mr. Merrill's wife, the late chorus director Louise Sherman), we wouldn't have Opera Colorado," said Steve Seifert, who became general director after Mr. Merrill resigned that post in 1998. "This is a loss to a community he did enormous service to. But we need to celebrate what he did."

Beginning in 1960 and for nearly three decades following, Mr. Merrill staged some of the Met's most important productions. In 1980, a new challenge opened up.

"I'd been wanting to leave the Met," he told the Rocky in 1991. "I was bored to death - I guess I was having a midlife crisis."

With the Met on strike in 1980, he visited Denver and saw an opportunity to start a company and work in the round, since operas would be staged in circular Boettcher Hall.

"I had never done opera in the round and had never seen it in the round," Mr. Merrill said in that 1991 interview - admitting that he lied about his inexperience to local supporters.

"He gathered people here who just loved opera," said Ellie Caulkins, an original board member and namesake of the Opera House that opened in 2005.

"We were ready to have opera here," Caulkins said.

In 1983, the company debuted. Calling on some of his illustrious opera friends, Mr. Merrill directed Verdi's Otello, with James McCracken and Eva Marton, and Puccini's La Boheme with Catherine Malfitano and a promising tenor named Placido Domingo.

"Nathaniel Merrill was a wonderfully talented director who I had the great fortune of working with during my debut season at the Metropolitan Opera," Domingo said in a statement from Los Angeles released late Wednesday.

"In fact, his new production of Il Trovatore there in 1969 was the first time I appeared in a new production at the Met. It was a beautiful staging with a phenomenal cast and Zubin Mehta in the pit, so I was really a newcomer compared to everybody else. Nat’s formidable talent and experience was quite welcome and reassuring, and we all enjoyed a great success. In subsequent seasons, I had the pleasure of performing in several of his classic Metropolitan Opera productions. Later, when Nat launched Opera Colorado in 1983, I was very happy to be work again with my old colleague in his exciting new venture, and I know that he took great pride in bringing that company to life."

Another who came aboard was Francesa Zambello, then a young assistant director and now one of the world's most sought-after directors. "I helped Nat start (Opera Colorado)," she said in a call from London. "It was a great learning experience. He's really the person who got me started."

Many laughed at his dream, she recalled. "People in Denver were very cynical. It takes a lot to convince people to give to opera."

Mr. Merrill had been in Colorado previously, staging 11 productions at Central City Opera from 1958 to 1963, including a fabled Aida in 1960 with Beverly Sills. In 1972, he served as artistic director at Central City.

"Nat and (noted director Robert) O'Hearn did a lot of experimental things together at Central," observed former general director John Moriarty. "He had some grand ideas. We called him Cecil B. DeMerrill."

Not everything went smoothly at Opera Colorado. Money problems emerged periodically, starting with year two in 1984, and some subsequent productions failed to draw big houses. Yet, there was never a dark season.

Things seemed to come apart for Mr. Merrill in 1998 when, during rehearsals for Carmen at the Buell Theatre, his wife, Louise, succumbed to cancer, and the singer portraying the title character broke her arm. A month later, according to Seifert, a mutual decision was reached by Mr. Merrill and the opera board that the founder would resign.

Though he had no further interaction with the company, he continued to attend productions until the effects of Alzheimer's forced him to become a permanent resident at Aspen Siesta nursing home, where he died.

Born in Newton, Mass. on Feb. 8, 1927, Mr. Merrill attended Dartmouth College and later studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and Boston University.

Before Louise Sherman, he was wed to singer Barbara Curry. In 2001, Mr. Merrill married Pamela Meyers, a longtime Opera Colorado supporter.

Besides Mrs. Merrill, survivors include sons Hank, of Bedford, Ind., and Christopher, of New York City; and daughter Linda Ely, of London. A private memorial will take place this week. Plans for a public memorial will be announced later in the year.

Contributions may be made to Opera Colorado, 695 S. Colorado Blvd., Suite 20, Denver, CO 80246 or online at operacolorado.org.

shulgoldm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5296

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