City Theatre work remembers first African-American classical vocalist Roland Hayes

TribLIVE: When Daniel Beaty first heard Roland Hayes' voice on a CD, Beaty was an undergraduate at Yale. “I was stunned that I had never heard of this remarkable man, who was the first (African-American classical vocalist),” says Beaty, who received his bachelor of arts in English and music from Yale in 1998. Born in Georgia in 1887, Hayes overcame poverty and prejudice to become a world-renowned singer with a musical repertoire of classic and traditional spiritual music. By the mid-1920s, he was the highest-paid tenor in the world, performing concerts in the great performance halls of Europe and on recordings.