Some high-tech aspects of the 2009 'Ring'

Seattle Opera's production of Wagner's "Ring" enters the 21st century with e-mail postcards, webcasts and closed-circuit cameras.

• An online program will allow "Ring"-goers to create personalized postcard-like messages to e-mail to friends or post on their Facebook pages. These computer kiosks with touch-screen monitors will be at both McCaw Hall and the nearby Fisher Pavilion.<gridhalf>

• A series of Webcasts by 20-year-old "Ring" neophyte Cassidy Quinn Brettler tells first-timers what they need to know before seeing the show. Look for "Confessions of a First-Time Operagoer" at www.seattleopera.org (and read a Seattle Times story about the project at www.seattletimes.com; search "Cassidy Brettler"). <gridhalf>

• Eight TV sets throughout McCaw Hall during the "Ring" will show what happens backstage, as two KCTS camera crews capture and broadcast the backstage action to the audience during intermissions (and before curtain time of "Das Rheingold," which has no intermissions).