The lyric tenor made his debut with the New York City Opera in November 1944, as Edmondo in Giacomo Puccini's Manon Lescaut, opposite Dorothy Kirsten in the title role.

His performances on open-air stages included the Hollywood Bowl, Chicago's Grant Park, Denver's Red Rocks, New York's Lewisohn Stadium, Jones Beach Marine Theater starring Hayward in the opening cast as "Mario" in the show that was the operetta A Night in Venice by Johann Strauss II (produced by film producer Mike Todd, complete with floating gondolas and starring Enzo Stuarti and Nola Fairbanks at the newly constructed Jones Beach Theater/[10]), the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera and the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera[11] For many years he was the star of his own radio show Serenade to America broadcast from New York City on the NBC network.

His debut abroad was at the Palladium in London where he was a featured guest artist at the gala and was invited to perform on Val Parnell's programme, Sunday Night at the London Palladium [13] Hayward's studio discography includes RCA, Victor, Cambridge, Everest and Decca in addition to two recordings for CBS: Pagliacci (as Beppe, opposite Lucine Amara, Richard Tucker and Giuseppe Valdengo (1951), and Lucia di Lammermoor (as Lord Arturo Bucklaw, with Lily Pons and Richard Tucker, 1954).

In 1998, Video Artists International published a compact disc of excerpts from a 1958 performance of La traviata, from New Orleans, Louisiana, with Kirsten and Cornell MacNeil, which displays the voice in his prime.

[14] In 1964, Hayward left New York for Dallas, Texas, where he became Artist-in-Residence and Chairman of the Voice and Opera Departments of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University.