Richard Tucker

The annual Richard Tucker Music Foundation Gala, an operatic benefit concert honoring the memory of the late leading Metropolitan Opera tenor, took place at Avery Fisher Hall on January 11, three days after the 30^th anniversary of Tucker’s death during a concert tour. As often happens with these events, with all performers volunteering their services and winter weather adversely affecting some singers’ health, a slate of major artists was announced, but some had withdrawn even before the program was printed (including Met tenor Matthew Polenzani, the 2004 Tucker Award winner), and still other cancellations and substitutions were listed on an insert. Nevertheless, some rousing singing was, fittingly, heard and some repertory in which Tucker appeared was recalled.

To begin the evening, the tenor’s son and Foundation President Barry Tucker presented a short film about the organization and the singer who inspired it. Included were opera excerpts in which Tucker was partnered by his recently deceased colleagues Renata Tebaldi—a bit of the finale from Umberto Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier”—and Robert Merrill—some of “Invano Alvaro,” from Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino.”

To open the concert, Maureen O’Flynn floated fresh light soprano tone in an ecstatic “Depuis le jour,” from Gustave Charpentier’s “ Louise,” with a radiant piano high note near the end, which tenor Salvatore Licitra followed with a ringing “Nessun dorma,” from Giacomo Puccini’s “Turandot,” first opera in which this listener heard Tucker. Oren Gradus, Eduardo Valdes, Keith Jameson and Patrick Carfizzi joined them for a forceful first act finale from the latter opera, introduced by O’Flynn’s silky “Signore, ascolta!” and Licitra’s relatively sensitive “Non piangere Liù.” Conductor Julius Rudel presided over the New York Choral Society and members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. O’Flynn was Gilda in a scene from Act Three of Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” with tenor Bruce Sledge tossing off “La donna è mobile” with flair, Denyce Graves’ sultry Maddalena and Frederick Burchinal’s durable Rigoletto completing the quartet for “Bella figlia dell’amore,” and Gradus adding Sparafucile’s lines of recitative.

Bass James Morris, the only one of the singers appearing who actually shared the Met stage with Tucker, near the beginning of his career and toward the end of that of the tenor, contributed a gripping, sonorous “Die Frist ist um,” the Flying Dutchman’s entrance monologue from Richard Wagner’s “Der fliegende Holländer,” and sang sincere praises to the diva’s allure and hypocritical ones to God in the finale of Act One of Puccini’s “Tosca.” He, Mary Dunleavy and Meredith Arwady sang up a storm in the Antonia-Mother-Miracle trio from Jacques Offenbach’s “Les contes d’Hoffmann,’ capped by Dunleavy’s silvery high D-flat.

Fresh from her Met performances as Verdi’s Desdemona, in “Otello,” soprano Barbara Frittoli sang a lyrical “Tacea la notte,” from his “Il Trovatore,” and collaborated with Licitra and an increasingly hoarse-sounding Burchinal on a stirring conclusion to the opera’s first act, complete with her high D-flat. Frittoli also offered a dulcet “Io son l’umile ancella,” the heroine’s entrance aria, from Francesco Cilea’s “Adriana Lecouvreur,” a great favorite opera of Tebaldi. (An announced aria for Burchinal, “Nemico della patria,” from “Chénier,” was omitted.)

Mezzo-soprano Graves made a solo outing as the haunted Azucena, in a powerhouse “Condotta ell’era in ceppi,” from Act Two of “ Trovatore,” more secure, though, in the low range than in its highest reaches, with Carl Tanner on hand for Manrico’s interjections. In the Flower Song, “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée,” from Act Two of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen,” Tanner attempted a quiet ending, making a neat save when the top note threatened to go awry. He and Graves, with Kristine Winkler, Laura Vlasak Nolen, Jameson and Carfizzi, as Carmen’s smuggler friends, and Gradus as a resonant Zuniga, went on to the finale of the act. Jameson and Winkler were the estimable Candide and Cunegonde leading a heartfelt finale of Leonard Bernstein’s “ Candide,” which brought the benefit to a close.