WHY THE RICHARD TUCKER MUSIC FOUNDATION SCANDAL IS IMPORTANT

I remember the first time I received a letter from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation inviting me to audition for the Sara Tucker Study Grant. The letter invited me to the 92nd St Y on the Upper East Side of New York City, where I would sing an audition for a panel of judges comprised of casting directors, music directors, and senior artistic administrators from opera houses around the country. I soon learned that this invitation was a very coveted and special one: only a handful of young American singers deemed the most promising were selected for these auditions. I never learned who nominated me the years I was invited to audition for the Sara Tucker Grant.  All I understood was that it was based on the recommendations of operatic gate keepers and tastemakers who served in the administrations of the nation’s top opera houses. 

Each Spring, I was granted a special release from my employment in the Houston Grand Opera Studio in order to fly to New York to attend these auditions, which I was told were important. Many artist managers, casting directors and artistic administrators who were not serving as judges would observe these auditions from the balcony of the 92nd St Y to keep track of rising talent. Exposure was the primary benefit of these auditions.  Because this opportunity to be seen and heard through the lens of these auditions was so important, I was told that it almost didn’t even matter whether I won or not. I never did. 

According to the list on the Tucker Foundation’s website, the Sara Tucker Study Grant has been awarded 96 times since it began in 1998. It has been awarded to only 1 Asian-American singer: tenor Andrew Stenson in 2011. Of those 96 Sara Tucker Grant awards, only 9 went to black singers. All six of the most recent round of Sara Tucker Grant winners in 2019 were white. This is just the lowest level of award given by the Foundation. Its top prize, the Richard Tucker Award, which comes with a $50,000 award and a gala concert that is one of the primary highlights of the New York opera season, has been given 39 times since 1978, and only once to a Black singer: tenor Lawrence Brownlee. 

In the past few days, one of the foundation’s board members, David Tucker (one of Richard Tucker’s sons) made racist comments on the personal Facebook page of soprano Julia Bullock, who had posted a Washington Post article about the federal kidnappings of Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, OR. In his commentary, he called Black Lives Matter protestors “a Pox on our society”. When Russell Thomas responded to his comment thread with criticism about the lack of diversity amongst the list of Foundation winners since 1978, Tucker accused the Black tenor of “pulling the race card” as “another convenient excuse to modify the excellent standards of vocal artistry”.  

Much of the operatic community was revolted by his commentary and called for his ouster. Within roughly 48 hours, David Tucker was ejected from the board of the Foundation, who issued a short statement condemning his racism, ending with the following:

“The Foundation recognizes the need to find ways we can better apply core values of equality and inclusion across our organization and programs. We know that we can improve our auditions and awards process to create more equitable opportunities and increase diversity organization-wide. To this end, we are currently assembling a diversity advisory task force of artists and thought leaders to address these issues. We look forward to openly sharing our next steps and continuing to support the next generation of operatic talent."

The reason all of this is important in reality has very little to do with David Tucker and his horrifying racist beliefs. All David Tucker has done is shine a spotlight on something that classical music journalists and bloggers have been attempting to discuss in recent weeks: that opera has serious issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion – both on-stage and off.

While many of these articles and analyses (like the ones linked above) have primarily attempted to gauge this through statistics about the Metropolitan Opera, the Richard Tucker Music Foundation is possibly a much clearer lens through which these issues of exclusivity, inequity, and operatic White supremacy can be viewed and brought into extra sharp relief.  

If it is true that the Richard Tucker Music Foundation bases all of its award decisions on the recommendations made by the tastemakers and gate-keepers of the American operatic industrial complex, it means that these operatic administrators, music directors and other consultants each hold a great amount of responsibility for the lack of diversity that is glaringly apparent when scanning the lists of Richard Tucker Music Foundation winners. The predominance of white singers within these lists is therefore indicative of the preferences of these tastemakers, betraying their implicit biases when it comes to race.

If we really want to effect lasting anti-racist change in the operatic industry and art form, we need to focus on systems – not people. Because of its reliance on external, industry-wide consultation, the situation at the Richard Tucker Music Foundation presents a unique opportunity to examine the systems that maintain the operatic White status quo.

I hope that the Foundation and the “diversity advisory task force” they assemble (and whom I hope they will compensate properly for their time and counsel) takes this opportunity to address the system which is suppressing the many, and not just one organization that helps the few.