My netbook computer has internet access again. This was part of my internet problem that appeared Thursday evening. While on the phone with the tech guy he adjusted the frequency of the Wi-Fi on my modem so there would be less interference. Then he had me reboot. That's when the netbook told me it needed to install 14 updates and I didn't see a way to tell it that right now was not a good time. I thought about pulling the battery, but the tech guy said to let it proceed. He hung on the line for maybe 15 minutes, then called me back 30 minutes later -- still updating. He called again 30 minutes after that. By then the update completed, the reboot successful, and Firefox had access to the internet again.
But the TV issue isn't resolved, though I didn't try tonight. I'll take the decoder box to the company store for an exchange tomorrow. Which means I missed the first night of ice dancing. Sigh.
That gave me the time to watch the Brokeback Mountain opera. This is the one by Charles Wuorinen and Anne Proulx (the original story's author) recently premiered by Teatro Real in Madrid. The online streaming will be available until the beginning of May.
The music is not in the big romantic opera mode of, say La Boheme. The orchestral music is quite spiky and dissonant, the vocal lines a bit less so. Even so it gets the appropriate emotions across. I thought it was a fine production and piece of music with great singing and acting. It was well worth the two hours. Alas, there were a couple quibbles.
The first is technical. At two spots the video hung with the spinning wait symbol. But this wasn't a buffering problem. I could resume the show only when I clicked just after the halt, missing a bit of it. And the second halt was at a key scene and it wouldn't resume until I bypassed two minutes.
The second quibble was with the story, the same issue that I and many reviewers had with the movie. A big driver in the story is the homophobia that surrounds the gay lovers and that they internalize. Though that was appropriate for the time of the story (1960s-1980s) it is thankfully much less of an issue today. That means the story feels a bit dated.
In spite of that it is wonderful to see a gay love story sung in an opera house. More, please.
The opera is described as being in two acts, but this recording does not have an intermission or an obvious place for it. It will, however, let you pause.
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