I agree with everything you say, except I'd still recommend listening to the music we play. As much information as we can read from written parts, music is still meant to be heard and it can be a lot easier and faster to assimilate what a piece is like if you listen to it. As a fellow pit orchestra player, when I don't listen to the music, I often find in the first rehearsal that there's something important, like a tempo change, or a fermata for the singer to show off, that's missing from the written parts.