Richard Tucker

Richard Tucker stands out today chiefly through his deep ties to the operatic legacy of the United States. A tenor of exceptional ability, he ranks alongside Franco Corelli for sheer impact and popularity while sharing the tier occupied by Alfredo Kraus and Nicolai Gedda. Yet as a Jewish American whose path to music began in religious observance, Tucker produced a body of work that diverged from those peers, and within the United States he achieved equal or greater affection for this parallel dimension of his artistry. His portrayal of Radames in Verdi’s Aida, led by Toscanini for an NBC broadcast, reflected his standing as the foremost Verdi tenor of his era and marked a landmark moment across opera, music, and early television; Jewish listeners felt particular pride in his casting for the concert version, given his origins, even though his physique would have precluded him from any staged production.

Born in New York, Tucker entered the choir of an Orthodox Jewish synagogue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at age six, performing as a boy alto. During the following eight years he appeared at weddings and similar occasions, absorbing Jewish liturgy and the musical practices of the synagogue until the natural shift in his voice halted his singing between ages fourteen and eighteen. Once his mature voice emerged at eighteen as a full tenor, he resumed his place in the same synagogue. He pursued formal training in cantorial repertoire under Cantor Weisser, Zavel Zilberts, and Cantor J. Mirsky, all distinguished instructors, and by age twenty-two he served as cantor for a New York congregation. Subsequent posts took him to Temple Emanuel in Passaic, New Jersey, Temple Adath Israel in the Bronx, and the Brooklyn Jewish Center in Brooklyn, New York. While maintaining these duties he simultaneously trained in operatic technique and repertoire, chiefly under Paul Althouse, a onetime Metropolitan Opera tenor. In 1944, when Tucker was twenty-nine, Althouse secured an audition for him before Edward Johnson, the Met’s general director, during a service at the Brooklyn synagogue; Johnson responded by extending a contract. Tucker stepped down from his synagogue post to accept, yet pledged never to abandon his cantorial work, and with the Metropolitan as his base he eventually served as guest cantor worldwide, leading High Holy Day services throughout the country. He also committed to disc a distinctive catalog of cantorial material for Columbia Records, many of the earlier sessions guided by conductor Sholom Secunda. Later releases embraced lighter material, among them selections from the stage scores of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, most prominently numbers associated with Fiddler on the Roof. To certain devotees his more than six hundred Metropolitan appearances constituted secondary adornment beside his religious and broader Jewish output, which further embraced seldom-heard pieces such as Abraham Goldfaden’s operetta-style works for the Yiddish theater.

Tucker performed internationally as well, making his Italian debut in the same production that introduced Maria Callas to that audience; he appeared at Covent Garden in 1957, Vienna in 1958, and La Scala in 1969. Popularity nevertheless remained strongest on American soil, especially in New York. Because commercial operatic recording was scarce in the United States during his peak period, relatively few complete-opera documents survive from his first fifteen years on the stage. The Toscanini Aida, additional live performances with the conductor, and an English-language Così fan tutte from the early 1950s preserve his youthful timbre; subsequent operatic discs exist, together with Mahler recordings made with Leonard Bernstein for Columbia in the 1960s. Predominantly, however, his legacy rests on recital discs and his cantorial and Jewish-themed releases, only a limited number of which have appeared on compact disc. Tucker died in 1975 at the age of sixty-one. His funeral took place on the Metropolitan Opera stage, and the Richard Tucker Foundation continues to bestow an annual award upon a promising young operatic talent.