Helen Roberts
Encyclopedia
Helen Florence Roberts (15 July 1912 – 12 December 2010), later known by her married name, Betty Walker, was an English singer and actress, best known for her performances in soprano
roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
.
After beginning her career touring in Italy and then England in grand opera
, Roberts joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as a principal soprano in 1938. She remained with that company for ten years, marrying another company member, the baritone
Richard Walker
, in 1944.
After four more years of theatre in Britain, the couple moved to the U.S., where they presented Gilbert and Sullivan in two-person entertainments throughout North America. The then moved to Australia, where they joined the J. C. Williamson Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company. They toured with Williamson in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They also appeared in musicals, including a four-year engagement in the original Australian production of My Fair Lady
. After her husband died in 1989, Roberts returned to England.
, Lincolnshire
. Her father was a surveyor for Lloyd's of London
. She was educated at the Bruton School for Girls
, before her father moved Helen, her two sisters, Joan and Sheila, and brother Denis, to Naples Italy for five years immediately after World War I. Helen returned to England, to finish her schooling, and then studied music at the Royal Academy of Music
, privately and later in Italy. She toured in Italy with the Milan
Opera Company, singing the role of Norina in Don Pasquale
by Donizetti. After returning to England, she toured in Offenbach
's The Tales of Hoffman as the Doll and Antonia and also sang briefly in the chorus of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera
.
In September 1938, Roberts was engaged by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
as a principal soprano. She began to perform there under the name Betty Roberts, but Rupert D'Oyly Carte
soon asked her to change it to something more fitting to a leading lady, and she returned to her birth forename. During her decade of performing with the D'Oyly Carte company, she appeared regularly as Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore
, Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance
, the title character in Princess Ida
, Elsie Maynard in The Yeomen of the Guard
, and Gianetta in The Gondoliers
. She soon added the role of Phyllis in Iolanthe
to her repertoire. She sometimes also played as Yum-Yum in The Mikado
and briefly played the title character in Patience
. This was the longest continuous D'Oyly Carte career of any of the company's principal sopranos. The Times
repeatedly praised her singing and appearance, and The Manchester Guardian, reviewing the company's 1941 tour, wrote, "One of the chief pleasures of last night's performance was the lovely voice of Miss Helen Roberts." During the war, Roberts also sang in concerts and on the radio in aid of public morale.
Roberts married fellow company member Richard Walker
on 31 July 1944. Earlier that month, the two found themselves very close to an exploding German rocket near Piccadilly Circus
, as they approached a restaurant. They were not seriously hurt, but just before they went on stage that evening as Wilfred and Elsie in The Yeomen of the Guard, Walker proposed marriage.
asked the Walkers to give their concert programme at his pre-inauguration party at the White House
following his re-election in 1956, but they were unable to travel from Australia to attend. The Williamson company played Gilbert and Sullivan
for extended tours every few years into the 1960s, and Roberts reprised her D'Oyly Carte roles in these, adding the new roles of Plaintiff in Trial by Jury
and Rose Maybud in Ruddigore
. Roberts and Walker also performed in musical comedies in Australia under other management, including touring for more than four years in the original Australian production of My Fair Lady
, beginning in 1959, in which she played Mrs. Eynsford-Hill (the mother of Eliza's suitor Freddy), and he played Eliza's father, Alfred P. Doolittle. She would later return to the role. She continued to sing into her 70s, giving concerts to benefit charities. She also enjoyed painting and photography as hobbies.
After her husband's death in 1989, Roberts returned to England and lived first at Blandford Forum (where she continued to do charity work) and, in her last years, at Gillingham, Dorset
, in a retirement home where her two sisters also lived. She died at The Malthouse, Gillingham, in December 2010, aged 98. Her remains were cremated at Salisbury
Crematorium.
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was a professional light opera company that staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas. The company performed nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere, from the 1870s until it closed in 1982. It was revived in 1988 and...
.
After beginning her career touring in Italy and then England in grand opera
Grand Opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...
, Roberts joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as a principal soprano in 1938. She remained with that company for ten years, marrying another company member, the baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
Richard Walker
Richard Walker (singer)
Richard Walker, was an English opera singer and actor, best known for his performances in the baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Between 1932 and 1939 Walker was married to D'Oyly Carte chorister Ena Martin...
, in 1944.
After four more years of theatre in Britain, the couple moved to the U.S., where they presented Gilbert and Sullivan in two-person entertainments throughout North America. The then moved to Australia, where they joined the J. C. Williamson Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company. They toured with Williamson in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They also appeared in musicals, including a four-year engagement in the original Australian production of My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...
. After her husband died in 1989, Roberts returned to England.
Early life and career
Roberts was born in CleethorpesCleethorpes
Cleethorpes is a town and unparished area in North East Lincolnshire, England, situated on the estuary of the Humber. It has a population of 31,853 and is a seaside resort.- History :...
, Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
. Her father was a surveyor for Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's, also known as Lloyd's of London, is a British insurance and reinsurance market. It serves as a partially mutualised marketplace where multiple financial backers, underwriters, or members, whether individuals or corporations, come together to pool and spread risk...
. She was educated at the Bruton School for Girls
Bruton School for Girls
Bruton School for Girls is an independent day and boarding school for girls aged 2 to 18 located near Pitcombe in Bruton in south east Somerset, England....
, before her father moved Helen, her two sisters, Joan and Sheila, and brother Denis, to Naples Italy for five years immediately after World War I. Helen returned to England, to finish her schooling, and then studied music at the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
, privately and later in Italy. She toured in Italy with the Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
Opera Company, singing the role of Norina in Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
by Donizetti. After returning to England, she toured in Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
's The Tales of Hoffman as the Doll and Antonia and also sang briefly in the chorus of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
.
In September 1938, Roberts was engaged by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was a professional light opera company that staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas. The company performed nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere, from the 1870s until it closed in 1982. It was revived in 1988 and...
as a principal soprano. She began to perform there under the name Betty Roberts, but Rupert D'Oyly Carte
Rupert D'Oyly Carte
Rupert D'Oyly Carte was an English hotelier, theatre owner and impresario, best known as proprietor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and Savoy Hotel from 1913 to 1948....
soon asked her to change it to something more fitting to a leading lady, and she returned to her birth forename. During her decade of performing with the D'Oyly Carte company, she appeared regularly as Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
, Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
, the title character in Princess Ida
Princess Ida
Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen. Princess Ida opened at the Savoy Theatre on January 5, 1884, for a run of 246 performances...
, Elsie Maynard in The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and His Maid, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888, and ran for 423 performances...
, and Gianetta in The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances , closing on 30 June 1891...
. She soon added the role of Phyllis in Iolanthe
Iolanthe
Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh collaboration of the fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan....
to her repertoire. She sometimes also played as Yum-Yum in The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
and briefly played the title character in Patience
Patience (opera)
Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride, is a comic opera in two acts with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. First performed at the Opera Comique, London, on 23 April 1881, it moved to the 1,292-seat Savoy Theatre on 10 October 1881, where it was the first theatrical production in the...
. This was the longest continuous D'Oyly Carte career of any of the company's principal sopranos. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
repeatedly praised her singing and appearance, and The Manchester Guardian, reviewing the company's 1941 tour, wrote, "One of the chief pleasures of last night's performance was the lovely voice of Miss Helen Roberts." During the war, Roberts also sang in concerts and on the radio in aid of public morale.
Roberts married fellow company member Richard Walker
Richard Walker (singer)
Richard Walker, was an English opera singer and actor, best known for his performances in the baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Between 1932 and 1939 Walker was married to D'Oyly Carte chorister Ena Martin...
on 31 July 1944. Earlier that month, the two found themselves very close to an exploding German rocket near Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster, built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with the major shopping street of Piccadilly...
, as they approached a restaurant. They were not seriously hurt, but just before they went on stage that evening as Wilfred and Elsie in The Yeomen of the Guard, Walker proposed marriage.
Later years
At the end of July 1948, Roberts and her husband, seeing some of their roles being given to new talent, left the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. After a year playing in other theatre in Britain (he returned for part of that time to D'Oyly Carte). Roberts and Walker also gave two-person concert tours of Gilbert and Sullivan throughout North America in the early 1950s, where they lived for several years. They then joined J. C. Williamson Limited to tour Australia and New Zealand. President EisenhowerDwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
asked the Walkers to give their concert programme at his pre-inauguration party at the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
following his re-election in 1956, but they were unable to travel from Australia to attend. The Williamson company played Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
for extended tours every few years into the 1960s, and Roberts reprised her D'Oyly Carte roles in these, adding the new roles of Plaintiff in Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...
and Rose Maybud in Ruddigore
Ruddigore
Ruddigore; or, The Witch's Curse, originally called Ruddygore, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy Operas and the tenth of fourteen comic operas written together by Gilbert and Sullivan...
. Roberts and Walker also performed in musical comedies in Australia under other management, including touring for more than four years in the original Australian production of My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...
, beginning in 1959, in which she played Mrs. Eynsford-Hill (the mother of Eliza's suitor Freddy), and he played Eliza's father, Alfred P. Doolittle. She would later return to the role. She continued to sing into her 70s, giving concerts to benefit charities. She also enjoyed painting and photography as hobbies.
After her husband's death in 1989, Roberts returned to England and lived first at Blandford Forum (where she continued to do charity work) and, in her last years, at Gillingham, Dorset
Gillingham, Dorset
Gillingham is a town in the Blackmore Vale area of Dorset, England. The town is the most northerly in the county. It is 3 miles south of the A303 lying on the B3092 and B3081. It is near to the town of Shaftesbury which lies 7 miles to the south east. Neighbouring hamlets included Peacemarsh, Bay...
, in a retirement home where her two sisters also lived. She died at The Malthouse, Gillingham, in December 2010, aged 98. Her remains were cremated at Salisbury
Salisbury
Salisbury is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England and the only city in the county. It is the second largest settlement in the county...
Crematorium.