Norman Tucker

Norman Walter Gwynn Tucker (24 April 1910 – 10 August 1978) was an English musician, administrator and translator. Trained as a concert pianist, he was invited to join Sadler's Wells Opera in 1947 in an administrative role, and from 1948 to 1966 he was the managerial head of the company.

His translations of operas new to the repertoire and fresh translations of repertoire works were performed by the company at Sadler's Wells Theatre and, after his retirement and the company's move, at the London Coliseum.

Tucker was born in the London suburb of Wembley, the son of Walter Edwin Tucker and his wife Agnes Janet. He was educated at St Paul’s School, London, New College, Oxford, and the Royal College of Music. He graduated from the last with a performance of Brahms's Second Piano Concerto conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham.

From 1935 until the Second World War he pursued a career as a concert pianist. During the war he served first as a stretcher-bearer in a hospital and then as private secretary to successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, Sir John Anderson and Hugh Dalton. After the war, Tucker resumed his career as a pianist, but in 1947 the conductor James Robertson invited him to join Sadler’s Wells Opera as joint director with himself and his co-conductor Michael Mudie. They were dubbed "the three Norns" by the company.

The two conductors soon handed over all administrative responsibility to Tucker, who ran the company from 1948 until 1966. His experience at HM Treasury was valuable in the company's frequent negotiations with the Arts Council which dispensed the scarce public subsidies for the arts, and Tucker did much to secure the funding necessary for the survival of Sadler's Wells in the 1950s and 1960s. For the company Tucker provided new translations to replace some of the stilted old ones, and translated other libretti into English for the first time. Prominent among the latter was Piave's libretto for Verdi's Simon Boccanegra of which Sadler's Wells gave the British premiere in 1948. Other Verdi operas he translated were Luisa Miller and Don Carlos. Tucker was enthusiastic about the operas of Janáček (as was one of the company's rising young conductors, Charles Mackerras) and he translated Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen and The Makropulos Affair for their Sadler’s Wells premieres.

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