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Great Artists: The
Magnificent Richard Tucker |
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The Early
Years
"For a life that ended so suddenly, so unexpectedly, Richard
Tucker's began simply enough in a tenement in the
Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. He was
born there in 1913, the sixth and last child of Israel and
Fannie Ticker--immigrant Jewish parents who, like hundreds
of thousands of others, had crossed the Atlantic in
steerage, leaving behind the oppression and intolerance of
Eastern Europe, choosing instead the boundless optimism of
life in America. They and the other threadbare European Jews
who crowded the decks of the ferryboats that steamed past
Liberty Island were soon shunted from the Ellis Island
processing center to the swollen streets, decaying
tenements, and tinderbox sweatshops of the Lower East Side
of Manhattan.
The Tickers made their way into the maelstrom of lower
Manhattan with no money, no place to live, and four children
to feed. A farmhand and for a time a peddler in Sucharan, a
shtetl in the Carpathian Mountains near the Russian border
of northern Rumania, Israel Ticker entered the New World
with no appreciable trade. Only the generosity of a Rumanian
synagogue, whose congregation he joined, and a nearby
settlement house on the Lower East Side, helped him sustain
his family until he earned his first American
dollars--selling chocolate squares at a candy stand.
Following the accepted Melting Pot practice, Israel soon
anglicized his biblical name to 'Sam,' though he resisted
the Americanized 'Tucker' that his children would eventually
adopt."
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Proud patriarch Israel (Sam)
Ticker (center) with his family in 1926. Seated (left
to right) are Daniel Nacman, holding his infant
daughter, Ruth; Claire Nacman; Claire Parness; Abe Parness,
holding his infant son, Larry; Daniel Parness.
Standing (left to right) are Minnie (Mrs. Daniel
Nacman); Celia (Mrs. Louis) Tucker; Louis Tucker;
Fannie Ticker; Rubin (Richard Tucker), then thirteen; Norma
(Mrs. Abe Parness): and Rae Tucker. (courtesy of Mrs.
Richard Tucker) |
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"Sam Ticker
was an Orthodox Jew in a fundamental Old World sense of the
term. He remained devout and observant despite the
sunrise-to-sunset workdays he endured to be able to feed and
clothe his family. His religious devotion gave his younger
son lifelong memories of the importance of rituals in
everyday life. Each morning, young Rubin (later Richard)
watched his father don a prayer shawl and tefillin
and thank God for creating the new day and for renewing his
strength through the night's sleep. At dinner each
night--however meager the meal and no matter how late it was
served--Sam recited the Hebrew blessing, giving thanks to
'the King of the Universe, Who dost bring bread out of the
ground...'
A reasonably literate woman, she (Sam's wife Fannie)
fulfilled her responsibilities for her children's upbringing
by reciting the biblical verses she had learned from her own
mother, and reading them snippets of Yiddish and Hebrew
wisdom from New York City's then-prosperous Jewish
newspapers. Though Sam was dutiful, it was Fannie who
reinforced her children's identities as Jews, underscoring
the meaning of the Book of Jonah: 'I am a Hebrew, and I fear
the Lord, the God of Heaven, Who hath made the sea and the
dry land.'
To foster in her children a sense of communal responsibility
as Jews, Fannie Ticker used what she had learned of the
Talmud. A gem she frequently quoted to her younger son--her
'Ruby' (Rubin/Richard), as she called him, was the parable
of men in a boat at sea. Far from the shore, the parable
went, one man began to bore a small hole in the bottom of
the boat. When the others admonished him to stop, the man
responded, 'But I am boring the hole under my own seat.'
Only when his comrades pointed out that he would cause all
of them to drown did the self-centered man stop what he was
doing. 'So it is with Israel,' the Talmud declares, 'Its
wealth or its woe is in the hands of every individual
Israelite.'"
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Great
Artist Series
The Yiddish World
The Magnificent
Richard Tucker
in Gounod's
"Faust"
Richard Tucker
as Radames
in Verdi's
"Aida"
Richard Tucker
as Alvaro
in
"La Forza del Destino"
Richard Tucker
as Des Grieux
in
"Manon Lescaut"
Richard Tucker
as Cavaradossi
in
Puccini's
"Tosca"
Richard Tucker
as Tamino
in Mozart's
"Magic Flute" |
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