The Fix (opera)

As The Fix: Opera in Two Acts the work received its world premiere at the Ordway Theater, Saint Paul, Minnesota, on March 16, 2019 under the directorship and dramaturgy of Eric Simonson.

1919 “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, star slugger for the Chicago White Sox, is scolded by his wife, Katie, for signing a contract against his interests.

Ring Lardner, optimistic reporter, extols the virtues of the “best team in the history of baseball” while his cynical counterpart, Hugh Fullerton, digs for dirt.

Ace pitcher Lefty Williams pulls Joe aside and encourages him to consider a plan to “set things right” with cheapskate owner Charles Comiskey.

In New York, professional gambler “Sleepy” Bill Burns works with mobster Abe Attell to finance throwing the Series, while in Chicago eight players meet to discuss joining the conspiracy.

Comiskey and lawyer Alfred Austrian meet newly elected baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who vows to scrub gambling from the sport.

Katie and Joe's reprieve, though, is short-lived as Commissioner Landis declares the conspiring players banned from baseball for life, effectively ending their careers.

Tenor Joshua Dennis looked the part as the conflicted slugger, singing ardently in the soaringly lyrical music Puckett gave him for moments of introspection."

"[4] Lavender (magazine) critic John Townsend noted the strength of the "multiracial cast playing characters who were actual Caucasian persons a century ago" and found the show to be "one of those operas where you can just bathe in the waves of the music.

He described the opera's musical idiom as "not anchored in common practice tonality, but not altogether far from it, either" and identified a central love motif.

[6] The Pioneer Press's Rob Hubbard noted Puckett “makes interesting use of the orchestra and has a cinematic flair for swells and surges of emotion, but it’s easy to tell that this is his first opera, for he rarely puts his best melodies into the mouths of the singers."