A professional musical troupe stopped in Jefferson Wednesday.

Opera Iowa did a free show for second through fourth graders at the Greene County Middle School auditorium of “Sid The Serpent That Wanted to Sing.” Sarah Curtis is one of the performers and she said the elementary school show was about Sid the snake who is in a circus, but he wants to sing. Sid goes around the world trying different singing styles, but realizes in the end, he has his own special sound. Curtis talks about Opera Iowa does February through April.

“So the main point of the group is to do educational outreach. So we have two shows that we do: one is for school-aged kids, that’s primarily in elementary schools; we also have a community show that’s targeted towards families, that we usually do evening performances of. And then we also have a concert series that we perform, in churches or community centers, or assisted living facilities. And we also do master classes and workshops for kids, so there’s a lot of educational elements as well.”  

Gwen Van Denburg is part of the backstage crew and she described why she liked being part of Opera Iowa.

“It’s mostly about like showing kids that opera and theater can be fun, because opera is pretty  kind of stuck-up. And I like showing them that it can be silly and ridiculous and you get to get away with things in theater that you don’t really get to get away with anywhere else.”

The troupe also did a “master class” with the Greene County High School choir, and Director David Heupel pointed out that Opera Iowa did a short clinic where they listened and critiqued the students ahead of state large group contest. The final performance was at night in the high school auditorium with “Beauty and the Beast.” It was mentioned that Opera Iowa has done over 100 shows from February through April with this Sunday’s concert being the final one of the season.