headphones at the opera

Now this is cool!

The Nashville Opera is about to start offering directors commentary tracks to be listened to during the performance! I'm pretty proud that Nashville is pioneering this.

Apparently you are supposed to go to the first show, then go home, download the commentary to your MP3 player, then listen to it during the 2nd or 3rd shows. You just start playing it back at the beginning of the show and it should stay roughly synced (maybe the scenes or acts are broken up into separate files?). They even discount the tickets to your second show.

I would also assume that some that are curious about the technology or are totally newbies to opera may just do this on their first viewing, but personally i don't think there's anything wrong with that.