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 Australia in 1948, where they joined the J. C. Williamson Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company. They toured with Williamson throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. They also appeared in musicals, including a four-year engagement in the original Australian production of My Fair Lady. They also presented Gilbert and Sullivan in two-person entertainments throughout North America. After her husband died in 1989, Roberts returned to England.
(15 July 1912 – 12 December 2010)
Early life and career
In September 1938, Roberts was engaged by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as a principal soprano.[2] 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.[1] 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.[3] This was the longest continuous D'Oyly Carte career of any of the company's principal sopranos.[4] The Times repeatedly praised her singing and appearance,[5] 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."[6]
Roberts married fellow company member Richard Walker on 31 July 1944.[1] 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.[7]
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), they joined J. C. Williamson Limited to tour Australia and New Zealand. They continued to appear with this company throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. The Williamson company played Gilbert and Sullivan for extended tours every few years, 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.[1] 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.[8]Roberts and Walker also gave two-person concert tours of Gilbert and Sullivan throughout North America beginning in the 1950s.[9] President Eisenhower asked them 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.[8]
After her husband's death in 1989, Roberts returned to England and lived first at Blandford Forum 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.[10] Her remains were cremated at Salisbury Crematorium.[11]
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