An Opera Strikes Out
Joel Puckett tells the story of the Black Sox Scandal in a confused, overpopulated work.
Joshua Dennis as ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson, David Walton as Oscar ‘Happy’ Felsch, Christian Thurston as George ‘Buck’ Weaver and Calvin Griffin as Eddie Cicotte in ‘The Fix’ Photo: Cory Weaver By Heidi Waleson March 18, 2019 12:50 p.m. ET
St. Paul, Minn.
Benjamin Britten wrote a great opera, “Billy Budd,” with an all-male cast. Joel Puckett’s minor-league effort, “The Fix,” which had its world premiere at the Ordway Center for Performing Arts by the Minnesota Opera on Saturday, demonstrates just how hard that is. With a libretto by Eric Simonson, who also directed, “The Fix” deals with the Black Sox Scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series. The story ended badly for the players. Although they were acquitted at trial, the first-ever baseball commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was appointed to clean up the sport as a result of the scandal, banned them all for life from professional baseball.
Mr. Simonson’s libretto casts the legendary player “Shoeless” Joe Jackson as the opera’s tragic hero, with Katie, Joe’s wife, as its lone significant female voice, but unlike the title character of Britten’s opera, this victimized innocent fails to arouse our sympathies. Instead, “The Fix” falls back on sentimental tropes about baseball and sports heroes with feet of clay. Even more problematically, its nearly two dozen male characters—ballplayers, owners, gamblers, sportswriters—for the most part neither emerge as musically distinct individuals nor cohere as an ensemble. It’s a complicated story, and it needs a lot of words: Unsurprisingly, John Sayles’s 1988 film, “Eight Men Out,” covered the same material more persuasively.
In the opera, which mixes fact and fiction, Joe, an illiterate hayseed, goes along with the plot not because of greed, but because he doesn’t want to let his friends down. His greatest booster, the sportswriter Ring Lardner, sees Joe as “a God on Earth,” the embodiment of success that comes through nothing but raw talent. Unfortunately, Lardner’s arias of praise, even as sung by the accomplished baritone Kelly Markgraf, are musically bland. And of course, this being opera, we never see Joe play. Instead, tenor Joshua Dennis evoked a simpleton with a suspect country accent, given to Puccini-esque romantic duets with Katie (the shrill Jasmine Habersham). Only Joe’s Act II confession had a bit of pizazz.
Jasmine Habersham as Katie and Mr. Dennis Photo: Cory Weaver
First baseman Arnold “Chick” Gandil, the ringleader of the scheme, came across as tough and cynical, thanks to the power of bass Wei Wu, and Brian Wallin’s piercing tenor gave the gambler Abe Attell a huckster’s edge. Otherwise, Mr. Puckett’s vocal writing had a word-focused sameness that made it difficult to distinguish who was who. One might expect an operatic baseball team to have choral moments, but other than a brief, pedestrian ensemble in the locker room that involved blowing bubbles, dreaming dreams, and scheming schemes, there were none. The orchestra, led by Timothy Myers, broadly signaled ominous deeds with devices like a key change in “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a game got under way, and a frequently tolling bell.
Walt Spangler’s set placed the opera’s action under the bleachers of a ballpark; locations such as a locker room, a nightclub, a hotel room and a courtroom rolled swiftly on and off. Trevor Bowen’s inoffensive costumes evoked the period (though Landis’s velvet cloak made him look more like a Spanish Inquisitor than a judge) and Robert Wierzel’s lighting managed to conjure up some atmosphere. Choreographer Heidi Spesard-Noble gave the spangle-bedazzled nightclub dancers a few Charleston moves, and Mr. Simonson’s direction was efficient.
Other featured members of the large cast included Sidney Outlaw (pitcher Claude “Lefty” Williams), Christian Sanders (shortstop Charles “Swede” Risberg), Calvin Griffin (pitcher Eddie Cicotte), Dennis Petersen (sportswriter Hugh Fullerton), and Benjamin Sieverding as Alfred Austrian, Esq., the team owner’s lawyer and the closest “The Fix” came to having a villain, albeit of the metaphorically mustachio-twirling variety.
Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).
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