Curtain-up for Dr. Bancks’ first opera

Composer Dr. Jacob Bancks’ opera about people with cancer, and those who love them, premieres this Saturday. It’s the Augustana professor’s first opera, and the first time the Quad City Symphony Orchestra has commissioned a new opera in its 104-season history.

The opera was produced in collaboration with Living Proof Exhibit (LPE), a non-profit co-founded by Pamela Crouch '81 to provide therapeutic benefits of the arts to people impacted by cancer. Crouch played a seminal role in the opera's genesis prior to stepping down as executive director last year. She was succeeded by 2014 Augustana graduate Jordan Kirkbride.

For Dr. Bancks, the project is a childhood dream come true.

“I’ve been composing since I was 5 years old,” said Dr. Bancks, associate professor of music, in an interview with WVIK Quad Cities NPR. “I’ve always been drawn to theatrical music, but I never knew if I would have the opportunity to write an opera. When I was a kid, I had a book of opera stories that I read obsessively. To have my work performed at all, but in this case by such outstanding artists, I feel so, so happy this is happening.”

Hippocrates is said to have named masses of cancerous cells karkinos, which is Greek for “crab.” Dr. Bancks’ opera, titled “Karkinos,” tells the story of an empress (representing a cancer patient) who’s forced into battle with the unseen monster Karkinos (cancer) on the night before her coronation. The large-scale, multi-media production features chamber orchestra, vocal soloists, dancers and chorus.

Dr. Bancks wrote the allegorical libretto based on more than 30 conversations he had with cancer survivors, family members who loved and cared for them during their treatments, oncologists and oncology nurses. 

“I had those conversations in the winter of 2019, but I can remember almost all of them like it was yesterday,” Dr. Bancks told WVIK. “Every person I talked to was a hero to me. On the surface, they’re just ordinary people … people you would see at Kohl’s or walking around the hospital. 

“And yet, once the stories started, I was blown away by the incredible experiences they were describing. It was easy to set that into the dramatic mode of opera because they were truly life-and-death, existential experiences.”

Dr. Bancks also wrote for the chorus, which plays the typical crowd but also the monster in the central part of the opera. “Rather than casting someone in this villain role, I thought it would be far more terrifying and also far more true to life if the chorus would portray Karkinos,” he explained. 

The invisibility of the monster is important to the story as cancer is not just physiological but also touches the soul, as manifested through anxieties and fears, he added.

"I hope audience members leave with a new sense of hope and pride in themselves and their experiences," Kirkbride said. "Everyone works through a cancer diagnosis in their own way, but I think something that is universal for cancer-impacted people is a feeling of fear and the 'unknown.'

"I know that Dr. Bancks' work will give them a way to work through some of those feelings and renew their faith in themselves and their community."

“Karkinos” features not only Dr. Bancks’ talents, but those of others in the Augustana community: 

Shelley Cooper, stage director
Deb Dakin, viola
Ellen Dixon, costumer
Kelly Hill, mezzo-soprano soloist
Ben Holmes, chorus
Maureen Holmes, chorus
Jon Hurty, chorus
Sonja Hurty, chorus
Sabrina Tabby, violin
Marc Zyla, horn

Note: Saturday’s premiere of his first opera continues an impressive stretch for Dr. Jacob Bancks in recent months. The Philadelphia Orchestra commissioned him to compose a Clarinet Concerto for its principal clarinetist Ricardo Morales. The 25-minute piece premiered in November 2021 and garnered critical praise from both The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal.