In Buenos Aires on his first Latino concert tour, Metropolitan Opera Tenor Richard Tucker was booked for six performances. To his horror he soon developed a sore throat and then, far worse, lost his voice entirely. To round out the nightmare, Argentine doctors at first could not detect what ailed him. After two days of near-mute anxiety. Tucker was ready to pack and go home. At last, however, it was determined that Trencherman Tucker had wolfed down a plate of scrambled eggs with a hidden ingredient--a chip of enamel that had lodged in his throat and sabotaged his larynx. Once it was removed, he regained his voice, drew mighty ovations and endless curtain calls from the audiences in B.A.'s old Colon Theater.

Milan Industrialist Giovanni Meneghini has an avocation that brought him nothing but grief in the past year. He fancies himself a talent scout and keeps his ears, heart and purse open for promising young operatic divas. His most notable find: sulphurous Soprano Maria Callas, 36, whom Meneghini. now 65. discovered, had trained under Italy's best voice cultivators, persuaded to diet off 70 Ibs. down to a svelte 135. Meneghini's biggest mistake, as it turned out. was to marry Maria; they are now legally separated after ten years of marriage, and she spends many unoperatic moments with Shipping Tycoon Aristotle Onassis. For a while it seemed that Meneghini, for reasons known only to himself, was heartbroken over Maria's departure, but last week there was a new trill in his ears. It emanated from promising young Silvana Tumicelli, 23, daughter of a furniture maker. Meneghini hopes to launch his new protegee in the style to which Maria grew accustomed, probably in Venice's La Fenice opera house. How will it all end? Said one of Silvana's friends: "She's kind of like Callas--except she doesn't want to go on The Diet." Silvana has no need to reduce: happily, she is about the same size before as Maria was after.

Winding up a three-month tour of the Soviet Union, thicket-topped Pianist Van Cliburn, 26, beyond dispute the Russians' favorite American, played, sang and wept through a televised farewell concert, also posed with two other TV stars, Belka and Strelka, the Soviet space dogs. Presented with his tour earnings of roughly $8,000, Cliburn, not permitted to take the money back to the U.S., passed up a chance to shoot the wad on a luxurious

Chaika car that would have been exportable, instead turned over the whole amount to Moscow's dilapidated Baptist Church, only Protestant church in the Soviet capital. It was a gift, said he, in memory of his grandfather, a Baptist minister in Texas. Later, amidst more teary farewells at a Moscow airport, he flew off for home on the same plane with Barbara Powers, wife of one of the least popular Americans in Russia.

In Hawaii, the urge to go native overcame Conductor Leonard Bernstein on his 42nd birthday, so he stripped down for action and conducted a seashore luau on the island of Maui. Clad only in a slit-to-hip malo and a rakish palm hat, Bernstein entertained his entire New York Philharmonic Orchestra, which was flown over to Maui after two concerts under Bernstein's baton in Honolulu. During the day the mellowing boy wonder of music went waterskiing, stuffed himself with poi and other Hawaiian goodies, planted a coconut tree and got a raft of gifts, including a pass exempting him from being jugged for any Maui traffic violations.

Winner by some 6,000 votes in a Democratic primary runoff election that will surely plop him into the U.S. House of Representatives next January, Louisiana's ex-Governor Earl Long, a hard-living 65, was borne by stretcher from victory to a hospital. His self-diagnosis: ptomaine poisoning from eating some very ripe pork. Drawled Ole Earl of his triumph over Incumbent Harold McSween in the back-country Eighth District race: "Ah don't think it helped McSween with all that about mah bein' crazy."

When the National Maritime Union's boss, Sailor Joseph Curran, spent more than an hour with Nikita Khrushchev in the Kremlin in July, he heard, by his account, the most candid analysis yet to come from K. on the merits of the U.S. presidential candidates. Joe Curran, a spear-bearer of the Kennedy camp, at first told newsmen that Khrushchev felt that Kennedy would be a "sensible" President. But just in case the Kennedy camp was worried about Joe Curran's failure to qualify K.'s kiss-of-death remark, Curran hastened to say, a bit later on TV's Meet the Press, that what he really had meant was that Khrushchev is afraid of Jack Kennedy. In fact, said Joe, "he hates Kennedy." As for Dick Nixon, Curran reported that Khrushchev has only contempt for the Vice President: "He is a fumbler. He is not a politician but a grocery clerk." Such a bad billing from K. suited the Nixon forces just fine, but last week a rebuttal to the Red boss's insult was put in by an unlikely enrolled Republican. In an outraged letter to Nikita, James A. Suffridge, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Retail Clerks International Association, protested: "It is far better to be a free grocery clerk in America than it is to be top dog in the Soviet Union"-- a proposition on which both Nixon and Kennedy could agree.

Ready to go back to college after an eleven-year absence was Nuclear Physicist Frank Oppenheimer. In 1949 Oppenheimer resigned from his position as an associate professor at the University of Minnesota just before testifying to a congressional committee that he had been a card-carrying Communist for three years in the 1930s but had quit the party in disillusionment. After that Frank Oppenheimer, now 47, younger brother of Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (who has had his own security-risk problems), was unable to get another university job, fell to teaching in Colorado high schools. But last week came the announcement that Frank will soon become a visiting lecturer in physical science at the University of Colorado.

In Tokyo, the sixth annual Hibachi Cup softball game was played between U.S. embassy and Japanese Foreign Office teams. The contest was once a classic in that the diplomats tried desperately to help the rival team win. Not so any more. Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, 51, onetime player at Massachusetts' Milton Academy, smashed out a double and two singles, sparkplugged the team from his shortstop position to an 11-5 victory. Japan's bespectacled Foreign Minister Zentaro Kosaka, 48, who also played shortstop, hit two hard singles, shared best-player honors with MacArthur.

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