Roland Hayes
Roland Hayes was the Georgia-born lyric tenor who became the first African American man to achieve international fame as a concert singer, touring Europe's grandest halls in the 1920s after being turned away from segregated American venues. Building his early recital programs around spirituals learned in childhood, Hayes set a template — closing concerts with a group of spiritual arrangements — that later concert singers, including Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson, would follow.
Hayes described hearing a Caruso recording as the moment that set his life's course, later writing that Caruso's voice seemed to come from 'some remote and inaccessible heaven' and that it awakened his 'dormant senses' — the spark that made him resolve to become a great concert artist.
listen forThere's no shared repertoire here — the connection is aspirational, not stylistic: listen for the same commitment to a full, sustained vocal line that first drew Hayes to Caruso's recordings as a teenager.