But it really wasn’t funny; it was true. Some years earlier a friend of mine from Venice had visited my home. He had been Mario Del Monaco’s doctor during the years Del Monaco had been on hemodialysis. He told me that the late tenor had been critical of most of his contemporaries, but that he had spoken highly of Tucker (Tucker was equally fond of Del Monaco’s voice). Tucker seemed to have warm relationships with most of his rivals. He was very friendly with both Corelli and Di Stefano. About the only tenor he didn’t get along with was his brother-in-law Jan Peerce. They detested each other. Peerce, who sang at the Met for 26 seasons, would never explain the source of their mutual dislike. Neither would Tucker.

Anyway, my friend asked to hear some of Tucker’s recordings, which I then played for him.

       “What do you think of his Italian?” I asked.
       “It’s great,” he said. “He sounds just like a Florentine.”

How Ruben Ticker, born in 1913 in Brooklyn, ended up sounding like a Florentine is beyond my ken. Equally mysterious is how he came to sound as good as Caruso. But he did both.

When Tucker started his career at the Met he had only a few staged opera performances behind him – at small New York companies. He was engaged by the Met to sing a role in an opera he not only didn’t know, but had never heard, Enzo in La Gioconda. Yet he learned the part rapidly and performed it to great acclaim on Jan 25, 1945. For the next 30 years he was THE Italian tenor at the Met giving 734 performances with the company in 31 roles. Consider the illustrious competition he faced during that interval: Björling (121 performances), Del Monaco (142), Di Stefano (112), Corelli (365), and Bergonzi (312).

The source of Tucker’s success and longevity was multifaceted. First, God gave him a potentially great voice. He also gave him an incredible aural memory. Once he heard something it stuck with him forever. This trait explains his perfect Italian diction. Tucker also possessed a fierce drive to excel so he perfected his gifts rather than squandering them – think Di Stefano. Next he trained and worked (all his life) as a Cantor. Jewish liturgical music demands a technique similar to that of Italian opera. Long coloratura passages, wide leaps, and trills are routine. Cantors like Samuel Weisser, Yossele Rosenblatt, Mordecai Hershman, Gerson Sirota, and Zavel Kvartin were famous in the Jewish neighborhoods in which Tucker grew up. Weisser was Tucker’s first teacher. He sang in Weisser’s choir at Tifereth Israel Synagogue for seven years as a boy alto. Boy altos grow up to be tenors.

When Tucker’s voice changed he determined to become a Cantor. He served in this office for three successive congregations before leaving to join the Met. Thereafter, he sang regularly as a guest Cantor. His appearances at the Park Synagogue in Chicago on the high holidays were sold out years in advance. Yes you have to buy tickets to attend services on the high holidays. Any devotee of vocal music should at least sample some of Tucker’s cantorial recordings.

Finally, the former Met tenor Paul Althouse was his only opera teacher, though Tucker used coaches from time to time. Tucker credited Althouse for developing his voice to the great instrument it became. He also followed Althouse’s advice to add the heavy spinto and dramatic roles slowly as the tenor’s voice matured. Thus Radames, Manrico, Canio, Samson, Calaf, and Dick Johnson entered Tucker’s repertory only in later part of his career. Though he clearly had the voice for it, Tucker never sang Otello. He seems to have considered it a voice destroyer. Ben Heppner’s recent grief with the role suggests he was right.