Richard Tucker - Operatic Career

Operatic Career

Although Peerce remained skeptical of Tucker's ability and did not overtly encourage his operatic ambitions (which led, unfortunately, to a permanent rift between the two brothers-in-law and their families), Peerce did play a role in introducing Tucker to conductor and arranger Zavel Zilberts, who coached Tucker until he came to the attention of Paul Althouse, a notable tenor whose operatic career had begun during the last years of Enrico Caruso's long reign at the Met. Althouse became Tucker's only teacher. In a rare moment of the pupil disregarding the teacher's advice, Tucker entered the Metropolitan Opera "Auditions of the Air" in 1941, but did not win. When Met general manager Edward Johnson came unannounced to the Brooklyn Jewish Center to hear Tucker sing, however, Johnson offered the tenor another audition and soon awarded him a contract. On January 25, 1945, under the baton of Emil Cooper, Tucker made his debut as Enzo in La Gioconda. The debut, one of the most successful in the annals of the Met, heralded Tucker's 30-year career as the leading American tenor of the postwar era.

Two years after his Metropolitan debut, Tucker was invited to reprise his success in La Gioconda at the cavernous amphitheater in Verona, Italy, for which the retired tenor and Verona native, Giovanni Zenatello, had also engaged a young, overweight, unknown Greek-American soprano named Maria Callas. Contemporary reviews of the 1947 Verona performances of La Gioconda verify that Tucker's success considerably surpassed Callas's, a fact overshadowed by the soprano's eventual worldwide acclaim. Two years later, in 1949, Tucker's rapidly ascending career was confirmed when Arturo Toscanini, the most celebrated Italian conductor of the twentieth century, engaged Tucker to sing the role of Radames for the NBC simulcasts of a complete performance of Aida opposite Herva Nelli in the title role, an event heard and seen on radio and television, and eventually released on LP, CD, VHS, and DVD. This was the first full opera performance ever broadcast on national television.

In the ensuing years, Tucker's ample lyric voice evolved into a lirico-spinto voice of near-dramatic proportions. If his signature stylistic devices, especially his affection for Italianate sobs, were not always lauded by the critics, the distinctive timbre of his ringing voice, his unfailingly secure technique, impeccable diction, and native-sounding pronunciation were universally acclaimed in every role he undertook. A profusion of legendary tenors — including Jussi Björling, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Mario del Monaco and, eventually, Jan Peerce) came and went during the years in which (Sir) Rudolf Bing led the Metropolitan. Tucker remained a dominant tenor and steadily took on new challenges. Although an indifferent actor throughout most of his career, Tucker made a strong dramatic impression with veteran critics when he reconceived the role of Canio in Pagliacci under the direction of Franco Zeffirelli in January 1970. The tenor was nearly 60 years old at the time.

Before and after each Metropolitan Opera season, Tucker appeared on concert stages through the U.S. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, his appearances in a series of "Puccini Night" open-air concerts at the landmark Lewisohn Stadium in New York City, under the direction of Alfredo Antonini, often attracted audiences of over 13,000 enthusiastic guests. Throughout his opera career, Tucker also officiated as a cantor during Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and other sacred events in the Jewish liturgical calendar. A devoted but strict patriarch, Tucker oversaw the religious development of his three sons (Berel Tucker, b. 1938; David N. Tucker, M.D., b. 1941; and Henry R. Tucker, b. 1946), and arranged for them to sing with him on a popular television program hosted by Sam Levenson in the early 1950s.

Tucker had a long-running contract with Columbia Records, and eventually recorded for RCA Victor as well. But, measured against the sheer length of his career, Tucker's commercial recordings are proportionately sparse and inadequately convey the power and roundness of his voice, according to most of his artistic colleagues. Many of his commercial recordings, as well as private recordings of his concerts and broadcast performances, have been digitally remastered and are available in CD and online downloadable formats. A number of his national television appearances on "'The Voice of Firestone'" and "'The Bell Telephone Hour'" were preserved in kinescope and videotape form, and have been reissued in VHS and DVD format. Regrettably, a complete video performance of the tenor's searing portrayal of Canio in the Zeffirelli production of Pagliacci, which was to be paired with Cavalleria rusticana featuring Tucker's friend and tenor colleague Franco Corelli as Turiddu, was never telecast and has not been issued commercially, for legal reasons.

Although Tucker's well-crafted public image was that of a competitive, overwhelmingly self-confident performer, his offstage demeanor was that of an inherently private but unfailingly considerate man, especially where fans and colleagues were concerned. Never prone to looking back upon his career, Tucker always lived in the moment and maintained a boyish outlook on life. He also displayed a propensity for playing pranks on some of his fellow singers, often provoking a smile at some inappropriate moment in a performance. Once, during a broadcast of La forza del destino with baritone Robert Merrill, Tucker sneaked a nude photograph into a small trunk that Merrill opened onstage. In later years, Merrill described his tenor friend as "an original, right out of the pages of a Damon Runyon story."

Ironically, Tucker was touring with Merrill in a national series of joint concerts when, on January 8, 1975, he died of a heart attack while resting before an evening performance in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is the only person whose funeral has been held on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. In tribute to his legacy at the Met, the city of New York designated the park adjacent to Lincoln Center as Richard Tucker Square.