In Europe, everybody loves a tragedy

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING

“We never should have taught Grandma how to text.”

Young woman to young man, overheard outside Melissa’s Taqueria in Brisbane by Tony Press

Thursday’s San Francisco Symphony semi-staged performance of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” was beautiful to listen to and engaging to watch ... but bleak. The phrase “O God, have mercy!” is to “Godunov” as “E-I-E-I-O” is to “Old MacDonald,” and it’s an indicator of how seriously the plea is invoked that there’s no “h” on the “O.” This is a dark tale of power and grasping for it, within and outside the church. The analysis of the woman sitting next to me: It’s about “separation of church and state.”

I watched/listened to a performance at the end of a day when Attorney General Jeff Sessions had invoked the Bible as a reason for tearing kids away from parents (the relationship between dad and son is another leitmotif of the definitely unlight opera). But maybe I’m suggesting these connections because the news has been so addictive and so difficult that every aspect of life seems painted in somber colors.

So, thank you, Anthony Barcellos, who sent word that one of his pals has a strategy for creating the “happy ending version” of Wagner’s ‘Ring.’ ” He’s bought tickets to the San Francisco Opera to see the first three operas, but he’s opted out of the fourth. “No Götterdämmerung, no immolation scene and no end of the world with fire and flood.” Barcellos says he’s looking forward to the whole thing, but he understands the impulse.

P.S. Meanwhile, the Swedish soprano Iréne Theorin, whose brilliant performance as Brünnhilde in “The Ring” was so praised by Joshua Kosman in his review, was at Thursday’s “Godunov” performance. Can’t get enough of those jolly stories.

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⏩ A weekend of musicals started with “A Walk on the Moon,” its story (and some lyrics) written by Pamela Gray and directed by Sheryl Kaller, about a woman finding her bliss in the summer of 1969. The credits page in the program made this feminist’s heart swell.

The setting is a bungalow colony in the Catskills, and every character in the story, except “The Blouse Man,” a traveling salesman who is the lead love interest, seems to be a New York Jew. So Pearl gets turned on — something like the typical Philip Rothian Jewish man — by the other, played by Zak Resnick. He’s a fine blue-jeaned forbidden-love object, tall and handsome, and he sings a sweet song.

But for many women in the audience, seeing the ponytailed Blouse Man onstage evoked seeing curly-mopped Viggo Mortensen as the movie Blouse Man. Recalling the movie character encountered 20 years ago made for mutual swooning, swell moments of female bonding. Thanks, and do you have something in a solid color with short sleeves?

⏩ Cal Shakes’ production of Octavio Solis‘ “Quixote Nuevo,” based on “Don Quixote,” is both funny and timely, two concepts that haven’t fit together much in recent months. The quest of Quixote to find his love, Dulcinea, is presented as a quest to breach the wall between the United States and Mexico, and for a while, he wanders through a desert littered with the bones of would-be immigrants who didn’t make it.

“Octavio is always political,” actor Hugo Carbajal said in an onstage conversation after the performance. But Solis says in the program that this is his third interpretation of “Don Quixote,” and the border emphasis didn’t come until Cal Shakes invited him to make the story his. “Growing up where I did, the border was really right there, and we used to hang out at it all the time. … So for me the border became kind of a symbol between First World and Third World but also between the past and the present. … I feel that river, I feel that border coming right down my center.”

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⏩ Juanita More, host of parties on Pride Sundays for 15 years, has added a second one on Saturday night this year. It’s on the southwest corner of Market and Van Ness, on the second floor above the old car dealership. The space, unused for 45 years, was first El Patio Ballroom, then the Carousel Ballroom, then the Fillmore West. It has a long history, said More, as a place for “music, people dancing and partying and probably smoking weed,” she said. The main DJ is GavinRayna Russom of LCD Soundsystem, and the party goes on to 4 a.m., which leaves participants just enough time to refresh their glitter before the parade.

⏩ Observant Kristian Nergaard notes that the locker rooms near the athletic field of Ruth Asawa School of the Arts are unequally labeled: “Men” on one side and “Girls” on the other do not make a level playing field.