Baltimore Sun: William Benjamin Ray Sr., opera star, civil rights activist dies at 94

William Benjamin Ray, Sr. (1925-2019)

Prof. Kehembe V. Eichelberger sends this obituary:

Baltimore Sun

July 14, 2019

By Colin Campbell

William Benjamin Ray Sr., opera star, civil rights activist, former Peabody Conservatory professor, dies at 94

William Benjamin Ray Sr., a renowned opera singer and civil rights activist who left the Jim Crow South for Europe, where he compiled a stellar, 25-year performing career before moving to Maryland to teach young vocalists at the Peabody Conservatory and Howard University, died of congestive heart failure at the Gilchrist Center Howard County in Columbia on July 3.

The longtime Odenton resident was 94, according to his son, Alexander Ray of San Jose, California.

A rich baritone who was fluent in German, Italian and French, Mr. Ray starred in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Rigoletto” and many other productions, which led to television acting roles and music recording contracts. While catering to audiences unaccustomed to seeing African-American performers in European opera houses, Mr. Ray sometimes performed in whiteface.

In 1974, he founded Black Theater Productions, which put on sketches highlighting racial prejudice and the dismal treatment of minorities, in Stuttgart, Germany. Twenty-three years later, the gregarious performer received the National Opera Association’s “Lift Every Voice” Legacy Award, honoring the contributions of African American Artists to opera.

“My dream didn’t seem very realistic,” Mr. Ray told The Baltimore Sun in 2007. “I’m sure everyone was thinking, ‘Poor thing, how can he possibly think that he could be an opera singer?’”

William Benjamin Ray Sr. was born April 10, 1925 in Lexington, Kentucky, the middle child of Mason Ray, a milkman and horse trainer, and Beatrice Smith, a homemaker.

He grew up singing, beginning at age 6, at the First Baptist Church of Lexington, Kentucky, and graduated from Dunbar High School there in 1943.

Harlowe Dean, a teacher from Boston, offered to coach Mr. Ray after hearing him in church, even though the notion of a white musician teaching a black singer was unpopular among many at the time. Mr. Ray credited Mr. Dean with being instrumental in his development as a singer.

Mr. Ray was drafted into the U.S. Army after high school and served in the 375th Engineering General Services Regiment in Germany. He received the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, Excellent Marksmanship and other awards before being honorably discharged in 1946, according to his son.

Upon his return to Kentucky, he attended Kentucky State University for two semesters, until one of his music teachers encouraged him to apply to a conservatory: “With that voice, they’ll offer you a scholarship,” Mr. Ray recalled in The Sun’s previous report.

He attended Oberlin College Music Conservatory in Ohio, where he met his wife of 64 years, Carrie Kellogg, an accomplished musician and soprano. The two married in 1949, the year Mr. Ray finished his undergraduate degree.

Continuing his training under Daniel Harris of the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Ray was a soloist with the De Paur Infantry Chorus and eventually performed at Cleveland’s Karamu House, the oldest African American theater in the U.S., where he got his big break.

An agent from Vienna, Austria, was so impressed by the baritone’s performance of Puccini’s “Il Tabarro” at Karamu House in 1956, that he offered him a role as King Balthazar in a production of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” at the Vienna Opera House.

Perpetually high-spirited, with a good sense of humor and a love of travel, Mr. Ray took a chance, his son said.

“He really considered himself a citizen of the world," Mr. Ray said. "It was a bit of a leap, but he took that leap.”

It paid off. Mr. Ray became the leading baritone at the Cuvilliés Theater in Munich and the Frankfurt Opera, and appeared in 14 different German-language roles on stage and on German and Austrian television.

While touring, he earned his master’s degree in education from the Heidelberg University, Germany, in 1982. Nearing retirement from performing, Mr. Ray took a job as a professor of voice at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and moved back to the U.S., settling with his wife in Odenton.