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Normally, one thinks of teenage idols as a girl thing. In the 1960s, it was all those girls shrieking when the Beatles sang, or Herman's Hermits, or whomever. In a later era, it was Madonna, then the Spice Girls, Hannah Montana, and whomever else. Today, it's Taylor Swift (or maybe yesterday, it was). Sometimes, however, teenage boys have their idols as well. Usually, it is some star athlete, or a rock band leader. For the more artistic-minded, I remember those who idolized James Dean or Paul Newman. Mine was quite different. His name was Richard Tucker. This is how it happened and where it took me.
It started in ninth grade, when I was fourteen. Like many boys of my not particularly religious background, my impending bar mitzvah had awakened an interest in my religion. It's not uncommon, but many, if not most boys outgrow it. Mine, however, endured; one year after my bar mitzvah, I was still in Hebrew school (I would stay until I was past age 16) and attending services every Saturday morning at our local Orthodox synagogue.
Any case, it was a Saturday morning in May, and I arrived for services pretty much on time. Two things I noticed: the chazan was not there (he had a family simcha out of town) and the president of the synagogue was in a tizzy of excitement. It seems that there was an aufruf that shabbos morning. For those not in the know (and I wasn't in the know back then), an aufruf is when a groom gets called to the Torah the shabbos before he is married. In this case, the groom's name was Barry Tucker, and his father was Richard Tucker, the Metropolitan Opera singer.
I was just enough aware of the opera world to know who Richard Tucker was. He had started his singing career as the chazan of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, the tony Conservative synagogue that dominated Jewish Crown Heights in the first half of the 20th century. He had moved into opera after the war, and was quite famous. I also knew that he was a member of the local Conservative synagogue, where he had attended services every day to say Kaddish for his parents. (This I knew from friends of my parents.) What I didn't know is that he was also a member of the Orthodox synagogue, and here he was, celebrating his son's aufruf with us.
Services were proceeding along when the great one made a not very grand entrance (with this sons and his future daughter-in-law's father) , and took his seats with very little ceremony. A synagogue member led Shacharis, the morning service, in the chazan's absence.
Part of me was asking, would Richard Tucker take the lead at some point? I didn't think so. After all, he was a professional singer and he was here to celebrate a simcha, not entertain the congregation. Then, it came time for the Torah reading, and Richard Tucker was called up for the third aliyah.
This is the first that can be given to a Yisroel, since a Cohen (priest) goes first and a Levi (Levite) goes second. Tucker chanted his blessings before and after his portion in a simple, straightforward manner. It was a beautiful voice, even when used simply and softly. I thought of my parents' friends telling us how inspiring it was just to hear Tucker just saying Kaddish.
Others were called up for aliyos, the chosson (groom) was called up for his aliyah, the Torah was raised and wrapped, and the haftorah read. And then, Richard Tucker walked back up to the bimah and started singing Yekum purkan min shemaya, (May salvation arise from Heaven.) Richard Tucker was davening musaf as our chazan!
The Great Neck Synagogue sanctuary was at that time a long, rectangular hall. The walls were painted cinderblock. The floors were linoleum tiling. The ceiling was polished wood. The pews had cushioned seats and wooden backs. In sum, sound would reverberate and there was nothing to dampen it. The chazan stood at the bimah, located in the middle of the sanctuary, and I was sitting ten feet away.
The sound filled my ears for two hours, and ears were ringing hours later. I have heard much loud music; electronic amplification has left me with humongous headaches. But nothing I have heard since that Shabbos morning has filled my ears for so long as that one voice, unaided by amplification. He poured his heart soul, and voice into that service.
Sure, there was showmanship, but that voice was something to show. I left shul that day floating on air and my ears ringing from the memory. And something in me had changed. If a human voice could do so much, I wanted more of it, and the place to find that "more" was in opera.
Richard Tucker never acted a chazzan in our synagogue after that, and I only saw him in our synagogue once more, on a Yom Kippur night. However, he still celebrated his personal simchas in shul. Whenever a grandchild was born, we went to our local Conservative synagogue, and acted as chazzan there. (The popular story was that our regular chazzan, in his next contract, put in a provision that no one could officiate in his presence without his prior permission. The chazzan of the Conservative synagogue was not so insecure. If Richard Tucker wanted to give his congregation a free performance, he'd sit back and enjoy it) And if that wasn't enough, he would go to Vietnam (this was the 1960s) to conduct Rosh HaShanah or Yom Kippur services or a Pesach seder for Jewish servicemen, free of charge, just like his singing in our shul.
From now on, if I was to hear Richard Tucker, it would be at the opera house. (Or an occasional concert.) Nine months after my first encounter with Tucker, I went to my first opera, Verdi's Aida, with Richard Tucker as Rhadames. In those days, seats at the Metropolitan Opera were hard to come by. Nearly all performances were sold out through subscription, and subscriptions were usually acquired by inheritance. In any case, my parents managed to find tickets through a friend of a friend who was a friend of Richard Tucker, and there I was. It was a magic night; one's first live opera usually is.
Soon after that, I discovered standing room, and found standing through an opera was not that difficult. (Besides, people left early and you could usually get a seat for the final act; sooner if the opera was by Wagner.)
In the 30 months between that first Aida and my leaving home for college in Cleveland, I went to at least 40 opera performances, mostly at the Met and mostly standing room. The composers included Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Strauss, Gounod, and Bizet. The singers included, in no particular order, Joan Sutherland, Birgit Nilsson, Regine Crespin, Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Grace Bumbry, Christa Ludwig, John Vickers, Nicholai Gedda, Franco Corelli, Carlo Bergonzi, Cesare Sieppi, Georgio Tozzi, Robert Merrill, Cornell McNeil, Thomas Stewart, and so many others. Among the conductors were Zubin Mehta, Karl Boehm, and Sir Colin Davis. I made friends at the opera house, and for my Charlie Brown experience, I met my own little, red-haired girl after a performance of Don Giovanni, waiting for singers to come out to get autographs. In short, I was a teenage opera freak.
After that first opera I heard Richard Tucker a second time 22 months later, partnering Joan Sutherland in Lucia di Lammemoor. In that 22 months, I had been to six other performances, heard six other tenors (not to mention countless other singers) and heard many and varied recordings. Tucker no longer stood alone in my pantheon of singers, and some of the comparisons were, well, painful. His stage presence was less than awe-inspring, his acting was worse than wooden, his facial expressions bordered on the comical, and his diction was overemphatic. For once, I began to see why a good part of the opera world laughed at him.
Nonetheless, I think much of that laughter was unfair. Tucker was capable of beautiful singing. I remember a fourth-act duet from Il Trovatore, "Ai Nostri Monti" that was suave and lyrical, with the most beautifully-executed trills. Any singer capable of that deserved out respect.
There was another aspect of Tucker's performances that I only came to appreciate in retrospect. Onstage, he threw himself into each performance with every ounce of spirit and strength he could muster. Not only did he throw his heart and soul into a performance, but his kishkes as well. There is a story about legendary tenor Enrico Caruso: One night, a co-star asked him why he looked so pensive before each performance. Caruso's reply was that other singers have to give 100%, but he, Caruso, had to give 130%. I'm sure Richard Tucker felt the same way. (I pray that die-hard opera fans will forgive me for mentioning Caruso and Richard Tucker in the same paragraph.)
One night in 1968, I was backstage after a performance and I went to Richard Tucker's dressing room to get his autograph. Unlike most after-performance nights, his dressing room was not mobbed with friends and well-wishers. I was alone with the lady who was with me that night. I mentioned to him that I had heard him daven musaf at the Great Neck synagogue on his son's aufruf three years earlier. Tucker's reply has stayed with me ever since. "Singing in shul, kid" he said, "It's a great place to start."
Four months after that performance, I graduated high school and went off to college in Cleveland. There's not much opera in Cleveland, and I came back to New York for opera when I could. However, in time my interest in opera waned, and I pretty much stopped going. The Cleveland Orchestra performed in Severance Hall, on my college campus, and it soon became an abiding interest. Chamber music also caught my attention, and I drifted away from opera.
I wasn't entirely finished with opera, however. In my junior year, I volunteered as a go-fer as the Cleveland Institute of Music opera department prepared two of Puccini' one-act operas for performance. I got myself a walk-on part in Il Tabarro, and found myself cast to sing a four-line role in Gianni Schicchi. It's the only opera I ever sang; so much for singing in shul being a good place to start. It has however, given me something I've boasted about ever since. Gianni Schicchi was conducted by James Levine, who went on to become the music director of the Metropolitan Opera.
The last time I encountered Richard Tucker was at the funeral of Shalom Secunda, the composer and giant of the Yiddish musical theater. The funeral began with one of Secunda's liturgical compositions, sung by a choir with organ accompaniment, and with Richard Tucker as the solo singer. At the conclusion of the ceremony, Richard Tucker sang the "El maleh rachamim," the traditional prayer for the soul of the deceased. A very decorous, dignified modern assimilated Jewish funeral service had concluded.
At the internment at the cemetery, I saw a very different side of Richard Tucker, one I should have known existed, but it never entered my consciousness. This was 1974, and the non-Orthodox Jewish world had not rediscovered the old Jewish custom of family and friends burying the dead. When we exited our cars, Secunda's coffin had been placed above the grave and covered with a mat of artificial grass.
The customary thing would have been to say kaddish and leave. Tucker was having none of it. He personally ripped off the mat, and he told the gravediggers to lower the coffin. They hesitated, and he walked over to the switch to do it himself. The gravediggers got the message and lowered the coffin. Tucker instructed them to pull the straps up, and the coffin lay on the earth. Tucker dug up a shovelful of dirt and placed it on the coffin. He then asked everyone present to do the same.
Tucker was not satisfied with just that. He did some more digging and motioned for others to do the same. Finally, he cried out, "Would someone like to do a mitzvah for Shalom?" No one who heard him could resist. We all took our turns and did our part. The Hebrew term for burying the dead is "Chesed shel emes," the true kindness. It is the most selfless kindness possible, for the dead can never return the favor.
Tucker would not budge until the entire grave had been filled in, and only then did he allow the mourners to say Kaddish. As he walked away, it was obvious how broken up he was over Shalom Secunda's death. Not six months later, Tucker himself passed away. I can only hope that there was someone present to do him the same chesed shel emes that he gave his friend, Shalom Secunds.
The last time I heard Richard Tucker at the opera was an Aida in June, 1971. Tucker was good, Grace Bumbry, who sang Amneris, was superb (I later found out that she'd gone onstage with a fever.) The rest of the performance was atrocious. I didn't go to the opera again until over eleven years later for Wagner's Tannhauser.
After that performance, I realized how much opera is like baseball; it's never as good as when you were younger. Thirty years after that, I ventured into the opera house a few more times. This was partly a reaction to a son-in-law who is in love with Andrea Bocelli (he wanted me to go with him, so I had to come up with a reciprocal favor), and partly a function of wanting my grandchildren to encounter Mozart's Magic Flute. However, I am still singing in shul. From singing with the Vizhnitzer Chasidim of Monsey and the Bobover Chasidim of Boro Park (not to mention the Stoliners) to singing with the Syrian Jews in Midwood, singing in shul is a great place to start, and to keep singing.
(Oh by the way, I know a lovely shtiebl in Northwest Boro Park where Kabbolas Shabbos on Friday night is a unique treat.)
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Long-time JWR contributor Lawrence "Levi" Reisman is an accountant living in Brooklyn.