It’s a bit unfair to discuss my feelings about Barry Tucker. He is such a good friend that anything I could say would sound biased. It’s hard to believe that this stockbroker who never wanted to sing could have such a passion for opera. Barry’s passion clearly comes from his father, his mother and his wonderful childhood filled with sports and opening nights at the Met. As he himself states, “The Tucker family is truly a testament to how one successfully balances work and career.”
1. How do you balance work and family while pursuing or maintaining a career? Is it possible to have both?
I’m speaking now as the oldest son of Richard and Sarah Tucker. I have been asked this question for the last nearly twenty-five years since my father’s death. The answer is very simple: My father was one of the most disciplined individuals one could meet. He was able to keep divided what was work and pleasure. Work was the Metropolitan Opera, his role as an opera singer, the tenor, cantor or concert artist he was. He worked on television shows, whether it was the Johnny Carson Show, the Bell Telephone Hour or the Voice of Firestone. I hope this doesn’t shock your readers, but with all that Richard Tucker never sang in his home. Not once. His home was his home and he worked every single day in a studio or at the Met for studying or coaching. You could set your clock by him, and no matter where he was in this world, he would always call the house at seven o’clock to say, “How are you doing, what’s going on, how’s school, your friends, your sports…etc.” He never spoke about his job. He came to the dinner table and was more interested in what you were doing than interested in himself. My mother was also a very big reason he could keep that balance. Through it all, my mother was always there to help guide him.
My father approached opera as he would any other business. He was very dogmatic about it. He never sat down at a piano at the house and worked on music. He had too many other things going on in the house. After dinner he would go into the den and put the record on with the score in his lap and that’s how he did it. He did it through listening, not using the voice!
Although he kept things separate, he needed a support factor. The Tucker family as a unit has been involved in the opera world for close to fifty years. People say that they never remember a family that was stronger. We attended every performance, a little over 700, which is not a bad record, and my father made sure that every member of his family was out there yelling and clapping for him because he needed that support factor. How many families can say that?
2. What is the best “next step” for young singers after they finish their formal education?
It’s a very big question right now. Every one of these young students needs direction. They can only get this direction from somebody with whom they have worked for the past two or three years, such as a coach or music teacher of some kind. He or she knows their voices. Somebody can’t come in from Topeka, Kansas to New York and say, “I’m ready to sing Tristan or even La Boheme.” They have no experience. They were on a stage in a local high school or college and did one or two performances in English. They have to do workshops or work for smaller opera companies that are around the metropolitan area or even the local area where they are from to guide their voices. It takes a lot to start memorizing an opera: music, words, language, diction, interpretation of the role. There is so much that goes into it! After 31 years of a career, my father was still learning how to perform Pagliacci. He had stage directors such as Franco Zefferelli and Fabrizio Melano teaching him what to do, and yet he was still eager to learn new and better ways of doing it.
You have to be very dedicated to this career. This is a career whereby you really have to begin to start to study after college.
3. How does one choose their repertoire and when do you know it is a good time to move into different things? How did your father make those decisions?
My father solved that problem and the answer was my mother! She didn’t know that much about the voice in general but she knew about Richard Tucker’s voice. It took him 25 years to do his first Aïda on stage not the one he did in concert form with Toscanini forget about that. It also took twenty-five years to do his first Pagliacci. What did he do in between? Well, there are 29 or so other operas that he did very, very well: Gioconda, Traviata, Bohème, then to Lucia and Madame Butterfly. He did Masked Ball, then graduated to the Forza, slowly building onto the voice and career. And all of this was thought out by him, his coach and my mother. Sure, Dad threatened to sing Otello but Mom threatened to leave him if he ever did! He never did anything in the German wing, but he was beginning to look at Lohengrin, which was more musical than the other ones. Here was a man with brains. He never did anything too soon.
Remember, the voice is two little cords. If you take care of those cords in the right manner, meaning you let it mature and sing the right roles without forcing, the voice will tell you where and how to go. Let it flow, come out, and mature. If you are honest with yourself, you will know if it’s maturing and where it’s going.
4. As an example to young singers finding their paths, explain the beginnings of your father’s career. How did he develop his voice?
At age 8 to 12, he sang in a Jewish choir, then stopped when his voice changed. After going back to the choir at 20, he got his first offer to do a Sabbath service on the Lower East Side. That began his career as a cantor. He never dreamed of being an opera singer. He then sang the Metropolitan Opera Auditions and lost! The Met at that time, 1944, was looking for a baritone. But he made an impression on the management. They were planning to do La Gioconda and they were looking for a tenor. Having kept him in mind, they went to the temple, the Brooklyn Jewish Center, on a Friday night. The temple, which holds about 1,500 people, was packed. They asked the people they were sitting next to, “Is it always like this on a Friday night?” They said, “Yes, when Cantor Tucker sings!” They came back again for the 9:30 am service again 1,500 people on a Saturday morning. Well, this was the kind of crowd they had normally had for services with Cantor Tucker. They were so impressed that he could sing beautifully on Friday night from 6:30 to 8:00 pm, and then again the next morning at 9:30 am, that they decided to ask him to come back for another audition. The rest is history.
When he got to the Met, a teacher was recommended, Paul Althouse, a Wagnerian tenor who sang at the Met before teaching. He was my father’s teacher for 18 months. In those months he taught him the fundamentals. When Paul died my father never studied with another teacher the rest of his life. He tried others but none were so basic and truthful as Paul Althouse. He taught him the fundamentals of the game.
5. What are the most important qualities a singer should have in today’s music world? What does the Richard Tucker Foundation look for in choosing an award winner?
I look for somebody who is honest and who knows him or herself. I’ve seen too many Richard Tucker award winners come on the scene red hot, thrown into the den of wolves and never come out! But look at some of our successful winners now, Renée Fleming, Jennifer Larmore, Ruth Ann Swenson, Dolora Zajick, Richard Leech, Stephanie Blythe, Dwayne Croft, and that’s just a few! These people are dedicated to their art form; knowing who they are as human beings and how it relates to their artistry. By the time a singer gets to us [Richard Tucker Foundation] we already know that you have a voice and are ready to take it to the next level. But you really have to look at yourself in the mirror and ask, “Who am I? Let me be honest with myself and the people around me.” I look very closely at this. But I am not a judge in the Tucker Foundation system because I don’t want anyone to point a finger at us to say that someone got in because of Barry Tucker.
6. The music world is sometimes crazy and unfair. How does one survive the insanity?
Have interests other than singing. Don’t hang around the Met! Have your own life outside your career with family and friends. Participate in other interests. These are very important, normal things to do and that’s what made my father’s life so full. He was a great athlete. He played football and baseball with us. He swam a lot. It made our family unit so much stronger.
Also every entertainer needs an alter ego. Someone you live with who is very strong and can say to that individual, “I don’t think you sang very well tonight!” or “You could do much better.” My father tried to give 150% of his effort every single time he sang. So maybe he was only 135% that night. My mother let him know when she felt he wasn’t giving enough, even though he already knew it himself. But how can I say that Richard Tucker didn’t sing well? He never had off night, but we used to beat him up in the car going back out to Great Neck just for that 135%!
He needed competition all the time, whether it was Tebaldi, Sutherland or Nilsson, just to name a few. He strove all the time to be on that highest level of achievement. This was a different time in the opera world and competition for the audiences’ attention was part of the deal.
Years ago on certain nights, they used to have at the Met non-subscription performances. Those were wild nights! They put together amazing casts and the true public came. Bravos ticker tape – flowers! It was tremendous! For an entertainer, this was a great thing.
7. What habits did Richard Tucker have to keep in good vocal and/or physical shape?
As I said, he was involved in sports and to him, being a singer was the same as being an athlete. Like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, a singer has to be in good physical shape. A morning never passed for him when he didn’t exercise, just to keep himself limber. He lived a normal life but the day before the performance he would begin to follow certain rules. He rested and wouldn’t eat a lot, only a light breakfast and plenty of hot tea with milk to lubricate his voice. He wouldn’t talk that day. He would go to the theater at 5:30pm the day of an 8:00pm curtain, even for the Pagliacci which didn’t start until 9:45pm, to get himself mentally in tune for the role. After the performance he would let himself go, have his Jack Daniels on the rocks and then start having a big meal. By then he was extremely hungry from basically fasting all day.
He wasn’t a big vocalizer before a performance. When I would ask him about it his answer was always, “I’m in shape, I know what I have!” He may have sat down and hit a tone on the piano, taking a minute and a half to vocalize and see where the voice was. For an Aïda he may have even warmed up a little bit more than that as he knew he had the aria right away. He really knew himself. Singers all know themselves, how they feel and how well they did or didn’t sing. Therein lies the true test of the artist..
8. What would be one piece of advice you would want to give young singers today?
First, be honest with yourself. You know yourself better than anyone else does. Or get a mate for yourself who will always tell you the truth.
Secondly, this is a tough business! It has its ups and downs and you have to make the most of every situation and hope that you are in the right place at the right time. Constantly work and learn more and more. Never stop learning!
New York born and raised Barry Tucker is the eldest son of Richard Tucker. Since the great American tenor’s death in 1975, Mr. Tucker has carried on his father’s work through the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, of which he has been President since his mother’s death in 1985. Tucker is a Senior Vice President for Investments at Paine Webber. He and his wife Joan have two grown children and two grandchildren.
