The one role that eluded him at the Met was Eléazar in La Juive. He wanted to sing the role for a number of reasons; it had been Caruso’s last success and his last performance. Its Jewish theme appealed to him, though the Jewish protagonist is as much villain as hero. He sang the part in New Orleans and Barcelona, but died before the Met could mount the work for him. The company had finally yielded to Tucker’s entreaties to perform the work after a decade of nagging only to have him die before it could be produced.

Amazingly, Tucker sang about 75% of all his staged opera performances with the Metropolitan. Though he did sing in staged operas throughout the US and appeared from time to time in South America, he mostly avoided Italy until the end of his career. He had appeared at the Verona arena in La Gioconda in 1947 (also Maria Callas’ Italian debut – Tucker got better reviews), but Rome, Florence, Parma, and La Scala had to wait more than 20 years. His success in the home of opera was enormous. At La Scala his debut role was Rodolfo in Luisa Miller. Luciano Pavarotti who was at the performance said the audience “erupted” after the 55 year old Tucker finished “Quando le sere al placido.”

Writing about music, especially singing, is always frustrating at best and inadequate at worst. Music is its own language. You want to know what it says – listen to it. Nevertheless, those who love it cannot resist articulating its appeal and worth. Analyses of performers based on recordings of their work are especially tricky. A live performance exists in the present and the near future. A recording is entirely in the past. It’s the ghost of a performance, instructive and edifying as it may be. But it’s all that a performing artist can bequeath beyond memory. It’s been about 30 years since I last heard Richard Tucker live. As I write this I’m listening to recordings made in performance, some more than a half century ago. I’m not the same listener (or anything else for that matter) now compared to what I was when I was standing through Tucker’s performances at the Met. But what I hear now seems to correlate with my memory of Tucker onstage.

His vocal production was pure, like silver seems the most apt comparison. Like a silver trumpet is even better. While his physical acting was inept, his vocal characterizations were passionate and intense. He was an Italian tenor through and through. He sounds more Italian than most native singers from the boot. I can think of no Italian singer of his worth and vocal size who could match his technique. Of the non-Italians only Björling is in the same league and he couldn’t trill very well and had a much smaller voice. Melting diminuendos and caressing pianissimos were not Tucker’s forte, for those go to Di Stefano (who could uniquely combine them with dramatic intensity). But for the best sung and most exciting Don Alvaro, Enzo Grimaldo, or Andrea Chenier he’s your man. If you want to know what squillo means listen to his high notes. In brief, he’s on the very short list of the greatest Italian tenors of the last century.

Beyond that, Hemingway has the last word. “Among great masterpieces there is no order.”

The best single source of information about Richard Tucker is James A Drake’s 1984 “Richard Tucker – A Biography.” It contains a number of errors mostly concerning other performers. For example, Giuseppe Di Stefano did not appear at the Met in the 52-53 season. Milanov and Tucker did not close the old Met with the second act duet from Andrea Chenier; they sang the fourth act duet. But in the main, the book seems reliable.