Baritone Allan Evans has died at the age of 77.

The American baritone died on Nov. 7, 2018, in Mannheim where he was residing.

Born in Macon, Georgia, the baritone studied at Knoxville College in Tennessee and then at the College of St. Thomas. He would then go to St. Paul to study Musicology and at the Juilliard School. He would complete his studies when he moved to Europe in 1966 where he studied in Bayreuth, at the Munich Conservatory, at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and in Vienna.

He made his profesional debut in 1968 when he performed with the Vienna Chamber Opera, while he was engaged from 1968 to 1972 at the Theater Trier. From there Evans performed at the Theater Bremen, Zurich Opera House, Graz Opera, and the Cologne Opera.

In 1978, he became an ensemble member of the Basel Theater and continued the positin until 1986. The following year he became an ensemble member of the National Theater Mannheim, where he sang until 1999.

Throughout his career he would sing at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Staatsoper Stuttgart, the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Oper Bonn, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Oper Köln, the Staatstheater Kassel and Wiesbaden, and the Stadttheater Bern, as well as to Copenhagen and Luxemburg.

From 2006-07 he was a member of the Staatstheater Kassel ensemble and he would end his career at the State Opera Hannover where he sang well into 2010.

Evans became one of the first black American singers to perform in German opera houses and he would go on to perform numerous Wagner roles including Hans Sachs, which was one of his signature roles, and Wotan in “The Ring Cycle.” His repertoire was also made up of works by Bizet, Verdi Gerswhin. Tchiakovsky, Puccini, Rossini, Mozart, Mussorgsky, and Berg, among others.

Here he is performing in the final scene of “Die Walküre.”