Roland Hayes

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Hayes 1954, photograph by Carl Van Vechten

Roland Hayes (born June 3, 1887 in Curryville , Georgia , † January 1, 1977 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was an American opera singer ( tenor ) and the first African-American classical singer to find international recognition.

Life

The former slave son came to Chattanooga , Tennessee with his family in 1898 . He grew up with Afro-American spirituals , sang in the church choir of his community and led his own vocal quartet there. Since he had to support the family, he dropped out of school early. Nevertheless, in 1905 he was accepted into the preparatory program at Fisk University in Nashville . He attended music classes and became a member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers . With these he went on a tour in 1911 and took on this occasion with three other singers several spirituals at the Edison Phonograph Company .

After the tour ended, he stayed in Boston, toured with William Lawrence and William Richardson as the Hayes Trio and gave his first concert in the Symphony Hall in Boston, which he rented at his own expense . He succeeded - even against racial prejudice - enforce, and he received invitations to major concert halls in the United States as the Carnegie Hall .

In 1920 Hayes sailed to London with his pianist Lawrence Benjamin Brown , where he gave concerts with financial difficulties until he was able to perform at Wigmore Hall . This entailed an invitation to perform in front of George V and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace and brought him engagements in numerous European cities.

In 1923 he returned to the USA and successfully continued his concert activities there (also financially). In 1928 he sang in the Soviet Union, he broke off a European tour in the early 1930s because of the increasingly racist climate.

In 1932, Hayes married his cousin Helen Azalda Mann , with whom he had a daughter. He bought the Georgia farm where his parents worked as and where he lived early childhood and settled there with his family. In 1942 he published his autobiography Angel Mo 'and Her Son, Roland Hayes , and in 1948 My Favorite Spirituals: 30 Songs for Voice and Piano .

Due to a racist incident, Hayes sold his farm in 1948 and left Georgia with his family. Until 1973 he gave concerts regularly, including at Carnegie Hall, Fisk University and other colleges. Since the 1940s he gave private singing lessons, since 1950 he has taught at Boston College . He supported and encouraged numerous African American singers of the next generation, including Marian Anderson , Paul Robeson , Leontyne Price , Dorothy Maynor and Edward Boatner . In 1991 Hyes was posthumously inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame , and in 2000 the Roland Hayes Museum opened at the Harris Arts Center in Calhoun .

In 1953, Hayes was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1950-1999 ( [1] ). Retrieved September 23, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Hayes, Roland
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American (tenor) singer and the first African American classical singer
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Curryville , Georgia
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1977
Place of death Boston , Massachusetts