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He has done so with no real flair for acting, for it is truer of Tucker than of al most any other tenor that, in the Italian phrase, "the opera is in the throat." What emerges from Tucker's throat is a warm and sensuous voice, vibrant with emo tional fervor, capable of a lyrical legato or a ringing fortissimo. Tucker uses that voice with precise intelligence, lightening and darkening his tone to convey a whole range of feeling. Among the roles that he has not yet sung at the Met are two that contributed to Caruso's fame: Canio in Pagliacci and the old man Eleazar of Halevy's La Juive, which has not been given at the Met since Martinelli sang it in 1936. Explains Tucker: "Pagliacci tears every fiber of your body. I'm still growing. When I'm 50, I'll be ready. The pinnacle of my career will be Eleazar, but it's got to be done right. Too many people have been waiting for me as Eleazar."
NICOLAI GEDDA, 36, is as much admired for his dramatic ability as he is for his crisply controlled lyric tenor. Although he was born in Sweden, his clear enunciation of English has delighted Metropolitan audiences unaccustomed to understanding a word from the stage. It was partly
Gedda's English, in fact, that got him his big break in 1958, when he created the role of Anatol in Samuel Barber's Vanessa at the Met. Son of a baritone in the Don Cossack Chorus, Gedda was a clerk in a Stockholm bank when he decided to make singing his career, soon landed a spot with Sweden's Royal Opera, was invited to La Scala. In the course of singing about Europe and at the Met, he has picked up over 70 operatic roles, many of the non-Italian wing, including Grigori in Boris Godunov, Tamino in The Magic Flute — and most notably the title role in Gounod's Faust. His voice is not par ticularly large, but it is passionate, beau tifully placed, and as finely responsible to the shape of the music as any in opera.
JON VICKERS, 35, has the build of a pro fessional wrestler (5 ft. 9 in., 215 Ibs., chest 47 in.) and a dramatic tenor voice of appropriate size. Canadian-born, he sang in various church choirs and in am ateur operetta productions (Naughty Marietta}, but planned on a business career. He had worked up to tool buyer for the Hudson's Bay Co. department store when the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto heard of him and gave him a three-year scholarship, starting a career that led him at last to Covent Garden and a stunning success as Aeneas in Berlioz' The Trojans (TIME, June 17, 1957). A firm believer in the equal importance of acting and singing. Vickers is passionate and convincing as Otello, Don Jose in Carmen, Florestan in Fidelio and Siegmund in Die Walkure. His big, shining voice, surging over the orchestra, would seem ideal for Wagner, but Vickers is in no hurry to become a Heldentenor. "I love Wagner," says he, "but I want to sing for 25 years, not ten. German exploits the voice." Many of his colleagues apparently share his feeling: no truly great Heldentenor has appeared since Melchior retired (although the Hungarian Sandor Konya shows high promise).