Simon Estes

One of just a few African-American male singers who has had a top-rank international operatic career, bass-baritone Simon Estes grew up in Iowa in a house without heat or indoor plumbing. He sang in church as a youth, but when he enrolled at the University of Iowa in the late '50s he had never heard an opera and had no idea he wanted to become a professional singer. He joined an a cappella quartet called the Old Gold Singers, where a professor of voice heard him and invited him to listen to some recordings of opera. Estes took to the music immediately and moved on to study at ...