Did Jester Hairston sing the magnificent haunting (non-English) hymn that accompanies Dimitri Tiomkin's music on the opening credits? He's listed as an uncredited 'choral director' in IMDb's apparently exhaustive musical credits section. I've been trying for ages through every channel to identify him. I don't want to die without knowing who he was.
shareI'm sure it was not Jester Hairston. Whoever sang those vocals over the opening credits (which weren't in any language: they were mostly made-up words) was from the tone of his voice clearly a younger man than Mr. Hairston, who was 54 at the time and did not have the sort of depth or range exhibited by the singer. Moreover, from his pronunciation the person singing doesn't sound as though English was his native language.
You can hear Hairston's singing voice in Lilies of the Field, dubbing Sidney Poitier singing "Amen" (which Hairston also wrote), and the voices are not alike. His credit here was as you say for "choral director", which indicates just that: he directed the chorus, but someone else was doing the singing. IMDb has expanded its credits for this film over the years but there are still gaps, and I'm afraid the singer you seek was probably just a member of a studio chorus in Italy whose name, or at least whose credit, is probably lost to film history.