Norman Tucker

[3] 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.

[2] 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.

[2] Tucker laid great emphasis on the dramatic side of opera, and was proud of attracting leading theatre directors to work at Sadler's Wells; they included Michel Saint-Denis, Glen Byam Shaw and George Devine.

That box-office hit, followed by another with Orpheus in the Underworld (1960), made him determined to stage Gilbert and Sullivan as soon the operas came out of copyright and the D'Oyly Carte Company's monopoly ceased at the end of 1961.

[9] Other tensions between Tucker and the board, combined with his great disappointment when a plan for a new opera house on the South Bank of the Thames was abandoned, badly affected his health.