SAGA Of The 21st Century Girl for so many Americans is about as close to home as a head-on collision out on the interstate, or maybe a heart attack. Second, the performers as the characters were completely engaged and convincing. Third the artistic concept held together like a Puccini opera, seamless in personality from start to finish. I never suspected that Ms. Nan could produce such a thing of monumental concept as this opera. It did occur to me that (at times) the opera was rather monochromatic in its message and tone, but that is exactly how any one act of Puccini or Monteverdi is so even that has to count as an accomplishment. And the whole story is uncomfortably close to home for many American families in the present. That is the most authentic part to which I alluded. Let us not forget that the original audience for L’Orpheo trashed the house repeatedly until he rewrote a softer ending.

Nan’s opera, “SAGA of the 21st Century Child was performed by an excellent ensemble of fresh voiced soloists, who presented the work in a semi- staged fashion, all from memory and acted with impromptu stage elements. “SAGA” is an opera about our modern day apocalyptic science fiction reality. Its characters are presented to us at a safe distance, but they are in reality closer in real life than we like to admit. Each character is equally a victim but also a repugnant monster of the most frightful kind. The characters have no moral compass, nor regard for past or future. They only satisfy their present needs, and they have only infantile remorse and no sense of pity or mercy. It is this inescapable reality that makes me think of Berg’s “Wozzeck”, or Paul Ruders “Tjenerindens Frotelaelling”. (The Handmaid’s Tale). They all convey a helpless sense of foreboding and doom. The characters in “SAGA” are a new breed of human, entirely formed with new DNA strands from our modern computer age. Artists, thinkers…those with a moral conscious are near extinct and rendered obsolete. Its title character, the GIRL has an inability to process the forces that created her or the ones that guide her tragic steps. Often her music is in a rocking 6/8 meter, underlining her simple nature and arrested emotional development. In this and other ways, Nan underscores a certain kinship with ancient operas and morality plays. For example, there is a Greek style chorus, which stays to the side of the action but comments upon the proceedings. Occasionally they intervene and shape events.