Patricia Brooks
Encyclopedia
Patricia Brooks was a lyric soprano
, actress, and opera
singer, who performed primarily with the New York City Opera
. She was known for her acting ability as much as for her voice.
and attended the High School of Music and Art
, studying dance with Martha Graham
. Following a knee injury, she turned to theatrical performance, studied singing with Margaret Harshaw
and Daniel Ferro
, and studied acting with Uta Hagen
.
In 1960, she was performing as a member of the chorus in the Broadway musical The Sound of Music
and left to make her debut at the New York City Opera on October 19.
Brooks performed 29 roles with the New York City Opera
in the 1960s and 1970s. Peter G. Davis of the New York Times called her performance as the title character of Massenet's
Manon
"extraordinary," writing that she "sang splendidly" and "captured all the multiple facets of this intriguing character with a variety of dramatic nuance." With the Opera Society of Washington
, she performed the finale to Act I of Mozart's
The Magic Flute
at a White House state dinner during the Kennedy presidency. She performed arias from La sonnambula
and Lucia di Lammermoor
at the reopening of Ford's Theatre
in Washington, D.C. on January 30, 1968.
She also appeared throughout the United States and at the Royal Opera
at London's Covent Garden. She sang with Plácido Domingo
in Verdi
's La traviata
in 1966 and later sang in the same opera on the occasion of Domingo's U.S. conducting debut in 1973. She received outstanding reviews for many of her performances in such operas as Tales of Hoffmann, La Boheme
, and Rigoletto
. Her repertoire also included modern works. She made her New York City Opera debut in Werner Egk's
The Inspector General. She appeared in the world premières of Robert Ward's The Crucible
in 1961, Douglas Moore's Carry Nation
in 1966, and Lee Hoiby's
Natalia Petrovna in 1964. She sang the title role in Alban Berg's
Lulu
in 1974 at the Santa Fe Opera
.
She retired in 1977 due to the effect of multiple sclerosis
on her breathing, but continued to teach for several years and to direct productions as an Associate Professor at the State University of New York at Purchase
. In her later years she spent time painting in oils and watercolor.
In 1953 she married Theodore Mann
, artistic director and co-founder of Circle in the Square Theatre
in midtown Manhattan. They had two sons, Andrew (1958) and Jonathan (1961).
Lyric soprano
A lyric soprano is a type of operatic soprano that has a warm quality with a bright, full timbre which can be heard over an orchestra. The lyric soprano voice generally has a higher tessitura than a soubrette and usually plays ingenues and other sympathetic characters in opera. Lyric sopranos have...
, actress, and opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
singer, who performed primarily with the New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
. She was known for her acting ability as much as for her voice.
Biography
Brooks was born in ManhattanManhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
and attended the High School of Music and Art
Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts
Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts is a high school specializing in teaching visual arts and performing arts, located near Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School in the Lincoln Center district of Manhattan, on Amsterdam Avenue...
, studying dance with Martha Graham
Martha Graham
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...
. Following a knee injury, she turned to theatrical performance, studied singing with Margaret Harshaw
Margaret Harshaw
Margaret Harshaw was an American opera singer and voice teacher who sang for 22 consecutive seasons at the Metropolitan Opera from November 1942 to March 1964. She began her career as a mezzo-soprano in the early 1930s but then began performing roles from the soprano repertoire in 1951...
and Daniel Ferro
Daniel Ferro
Daniel Ferro is an American bass-baritone and voice teacher. Although today he is known primarily as a teacher whose students have included many prominent opera singers, he also had a career as a singer himself both on the concert stage and in opera and musical theatre.-Life and career:Ferro was...
, and studied acting with Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen
Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee...
.
In 1960, she was performing as a member of the chorus in the Broadway musical The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music is a musical by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers...
and left to make her debut at the New York City Opera on October 19.
Brooks performed 29 roles with the New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
in the 1960s and 1970s. Peter G. Davis of the New York Times called her performance as the title character of Massenet's
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...
Manon
Manon
Manon is an opéra comique in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost...
"extraordinary," writing that she "sang splendidly" and "captured all the multiple facets of this intriguing character with a variety of dramatic nuance." With the Opera Society of Washington
Washington National Opera
The Washington National Opera is an opera company in Washington, D.C., USA. Formerly the Opera Society of Washington and the Washington Opera, the company received Congressional designation as the National Opera Company in 2000. Performances are now given in the Opera House of the John F...
, she performed the finale to Act I of Mozart's
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
at a White House state dinner during the Kennedy presidency. She performed arias from La sonnambula
La sonnambula
La sonnambula is an opera semiseria in two acts, with music in the bel canto tradition by Vincenzo Bellini to an Italian libretto by Felice Romani, based on a scenario for a ballet-pantomime by Eugène Scribe and Jean-Pierre Aumer called La somnambule, ou L'arrivée d'un nouveau seigneur.The first...
and Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
at the reopening of Ford's Theatre
Ford's Theatre
Ford's Theatre is a historic theater in Washington, D.C., used for various stage performances beginning in the 1860s. It is also the site of the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865...
in Washington, D.C. on January 30, 1968.
She also appeared throughout the United States and at the Royal Opera
Royal Opera, London
The Royal Opera is an opera company based in central London, resident at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Along with the English National Opera, it is one of the two principal opera companies in London. Founded in 1946 as the Covent Garden Opera Company, it was known by that title until 1968...
at London's Covent Garden. She sang with Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...
in Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
's La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
in 1966 and later sang in the same opera on the occasion of Domingo's U.S. conducting debut in 1973. She received outstanding reviews for many of her performances in such operas as Tales of Hoffmann, La Boheme
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
, and Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
. Her repertoire also included modern works. She made her New York City Opera debut in Werner Egk's
Werner Egk
Werner Egk , born Werner Joseph Mayer, was a German composer.-Early career:He was born in the Swabian town of Auchsesheim, today part of Donauwörth, Germany. His family, of Catholic peasant stock, moved to Augsburg when Egk was six. He studied at a Benedictine Gymnasium and entered the municipal...
The Inspector General. She appeared in the world premières of Robert Ward's The Crucible
The Crucible (opera)
The Crucible is an English language opera written by Robert Ward based on the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. It won both the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Music Critics Circle Citation. The libretto was lightly adapted from Miller's text by Bernard Stambler.Ward received a...
in 1961, Douglas Moore's Carry Nation
Carry Nation (opera)
Carry Nation is an opera in a prologue and 2 acts by composer Douglas Moore which is based on the life of temperance activist Carrie Nation. The work uses an English-language libretto by W. N. Jayme. The opera was commissioned by the University of Kansas in commemoration of the school's 100th...
in 1966, and Lee Hoiby's
Lee Hoiby
Lee Henry Hoiby was an American composer and classical pianist. Best known as a composer of operas and songs, he was a disciple of composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Like Menotti, his works championed lyricism during a time when such compositions were deemed old fashioned and irrelevant to modern society...
Natalia Petrovna in 1964. She sang the title role in Alban Berg's
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
Lulu
Lulu (opera)
Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...
in 1974 at the Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera
The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...
.
She retired in 1977 due to the effect of multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms...
on her breathing, but continued to teach for several years and to direct productions as an Associate Professor at the State University of New York at Purchase
State University of New York at Purchase
Purchase College, State University of New York, is a public four-year college located in Purchase, New York, United States. It is one of 13 comprehensive colleges in the State University of New York system...
. In her later years she spent time painting in oils and watercolor.
In 1953 she married Theodore Mann
Theodore Mann
Theodore Mann, birth name Goldman, is an American theatre producer and director and the Artistic Director of the Circle in the Square Theatre School....
, artistic director and co-founder of Circle in the Square Theatre
Circle in the Square Theatre
The Circle in the Square Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre in midtown Manhattan on 50th Street in the Paramount Plaza building.The original Circle in the Square was founded by Paul Libin, Theodore Mann and Jose Quintero in 1951 and was located at 5 Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village...
in midtown Manhattan. They had two sons, Andrew (1958) and Jonathan (1961).
External links
- www.patriciabrookssoprano.com
- Patricia Brooks papers, 1867-2009. Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.