Helen Carte
During the 1890s, with her husband's health declining, Helen assumed increasing responsibility for the businesses, taking full control upon his death in 1901.
In her will, she left the Savoy Theatre, the hotel business and the opera company to her stepson, Rupert D'Oyly Carte.
[4] Her first engagement was a two-month spell as a chorister and small part player in the pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Dublin in the 1876 Christmas season.
[6] She adopted the stage name Helen Lenoir, which, she later explained, had been the surname of her French ancestors until they anglicised it to "Black" upon settling in Scotland in the 18th century.
[4] In February 1877 she travelled to London to audition for Richard D'Oyly Carte, who was setting up a provincial tour of a French farce adapted under the title The Great Divorce Case.
He engaged her for a small role, which she played in Liverpool and other cities, before leaving the tour after a few weeks and obtaining work in Carte's entertainment agency offices in London.
[7] From the time that she became a secretary in Richard's agency in June 1877,[6] Helen was intensely involved in his business affairs and had a grasp of detail and organisational and diplomacy skills that surpassed even Carte's.
"[4] She eventually became the business manager of the company and was later responsible for the Savoy Hotel, into which she introduced the new hydraulic passenger lifts.
[1][9] She also tactfully and sympathetically dealt with the personal and professional problems of the actors in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company casts.
Rupert's older brother, Lucas (1872–1907), a barrister, was not involved in the family businesses and died of tuberculosis at the age of 34.
She oversaw his management of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company's revival at the Savoy of Iolanthe, and several new comic operas including The Emerald Isle (1901; Sullivan and Edward German, with a libretto by Hood), Merrie England (1902) and A Princess of Kensington (1903; both by German and Hood).
She was a founder member of the Society of West End Theatre Managers, along with Frank Curzon, George Edwardes, Arthur Bourchier and sixteen others.
The number of D'Oyly Carte repertory companies touring the provinces gradually declined until there was only one left, visiting often small centres of population.
After the company visited South Africa in 1905, more than half a year elapsed with no professional productions of G&S in the British Isles.
Contemporary accounts describe Carte taking three curtain calls with Gilbert on the opening night of the 1906 revival of The Yeomen of the Guard.
[25] Carte has been portrayed in the films The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (1953) by Eileen Herlie[26] and in Topsy-Turvy (1999) by Wendy Nottingham.
