Patricia Brooks; Actress, Soprano

Patricia Brooks, a lyric soprano whose performances were as notable for the quality of her acting as for her vocal skills, is dead.

Her husband, Theodore D. Mann, co-founder of the Circle in the Square Theater in New York City, said his wife had been suffering from multiple sclerosis and died Friday at their home in Mt. Kisco, N.Y. She was 59.

Originally, she had trained not for opera but for dance, studying with Martha Graham when she was 15. But a knee injury pushed her into acting, and she appeared in several off-Broadway plays.

It was not until her late 20s that she began studying voice, making her New York City Opera debut in 1960 as Marianne in “Der Rosenkavalier.”

Her mother, a voice coach, had encouraged her vocal efforts and it was while Miss Brooks was singing in the nuns chorus in “The Sound of Music” that she decided to abandon Broadway for opera.

It was the beginning of a time when audiences were clamoring for dramatic as well as musical abilities on the opera stage. She filled a void in that area and through varied roles with New York City Opera came to be known as an actress who sang rather than as an opera singer.

Over the years she sang lead roles in “Manon,” “La Traviata,” “Pagliacci,” “Lucia di Lammermoor,” “Rigoletto,” “La Boheme,” “Lulu” and, perhaps most memorably, “Pelleas et Melisande,” a favored role at New York City Opera where she often alternated parts with Beverly Sills.

When not appearing in New York, she toured. Santa Fe and Los Angeles were frequent stops.

But by the late 1970s multiple sclerosis had affected her respiratory system and she was forced to retire. Most recently she taught voice and, when that became impossible, painted in oils and water colors.