There is something magnificent about a night at the theatre
or the opera: the beautiful clothes, the impeccable grooming, the airing of
jewels so expensive that the bank manager and insurance agents cry when they
are notified that they will be taken out of the secure bank deposit boxes in
which they normally live. The ambiance of the audience at a theatre or opera
house is worth experiencing even without the actual performance, but the high
prices can be very off-putting to almost everyone except the super rich*.
*Disclaimer: theatres have realised that this is an issue
and will often offer banks of seats at very modest prices – more bottoms on
seats results in improved profits, even if the seat prices have been reduced,
as the customers will buy food, drinks, programmes and other mementoes. And if
they have a good time, they will return over and over.
But it is a sad fact that many of us cannot afford to
frequent theatres as often as we would like to, even with reduced price seating
available. Sometimes, the knowledge that such an outing will not be repeatable
very often can lead people to not venture out at all – why, they reason, should
I go somewhere that I will not be able to go whenever I want to? Or, they
simply don’t want to take a chance and go to an event that they might not like
in the first place?
This is where virtual reality is coming to the rescue. Imagine
being able to ‘attend’ a full, authentic opera experience, from the safety and
comfort of your own home, in your sweats, but putting on a gorgeous show for
other virtual reality attendees – your avatar can be designed to look just the
way you wish you did, and you can dress them in designed duds for nothing (as
long as they are preloaded into the platform, of course!)
You would be able to spend two or three hours at the opera –
in opera houses all over the world, travel is literally effortless with virtual
reality! – and then return home, enjoying the best of the cultural highlife,
without any of the expenses or time spent on fancy peripherals.