Willie Stark: Harder than Rigoletto

I have had a bit further discussion with Dennis Jesse, the LSU voice professor who sang the title role in that school's production of Willie Stark. He shed some interesting light on the show from the perspective of the man actually performing the role.

The first thing to consider is the acting of the show. A general consensus in our discussion was that the show is a heavy acting demand for any cast endeavoring to put it on. According to Dennis, the most challenging aspect of acting the part of Willie Stark "was to be charming even while you were manipulating the crap out of others." He goes on to describe how during the development of the character, Stark began to become outrightly mean until Carlisle Floyd himself began coming to rehearsals and pointed out that politicians can NEVER be mean; although manipulative, they always have to be charming. I never thought of the role in quite that way, and it makes a lot of sense. This duality of charming / manipulative goes hand in hand with the duality we discussed in class about his moments of sincerity and then utter falseness.

The next aspect to consider is the role from a vocal perspective. The class seems pretty well in agreement that the show is not the most tuneful opera to sing. However, the vocal demands on the singer are still tremendous. Dennis says that he "would honestly say that this role was harder than Rigoletto and the most challenging vocal role [he has] ever sung." In particular, the revival scene was singled out as the most demanding scene to perform (certainly in part because of the A it requires from Stark).


*On a completely un-related note, I find it interesting that no one discussed what Willie Stark might have meant to LSU as a school. It wasn't until after our last class discussion that I learned that Robert Penn Warren, the author of All the King's Men, was an LSU professor. It must have been an event of particular institutional pride to stage the opera based upon that famous work of a professor emeritus.