Michael Tilson Thomas and S.F. Symphony join forces for a dark, pitiless ‘Boris Godunov’
After all these years, San Francisco Symphony audiences have come to recognize the Michael Tilson Thomas semi-staged opera as its own kind of music-theatrical genre. It’s a strange and original artistic hybrid, in which the conventional balances among orchestra, vocal soloists, stage action and visual design get shifted around.
And for the most part — in pieces by Britten, Beethoven, Wagner or Rimsky-Korsakov — it tends to work.
The sorcery kicked into gear yet again in Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, June 14, as Thomas unveiled his latest such undertaking, a dark and uncompromising account of Mussorgsky’s historical opera “Boris Godunov.