Farmers' Opera

Hard-bitten old farmers shook their heads and said the corn was more important. Younger Iowans had been singing for months, singing while they plowed and planted, milked their cows and fed the hens. Frequently they would do their chores before dawn, drive all day to rehearse at county meetings with other farm folk. Result: an all-rural production of

The Bohemian Girl last week at the State College football field in Ames.

The cast of 175 singers, chosen by competition, represented 47 Iowa counties and the 15-year ambition of Josephine Arnquist Bakke, State 4-H club leader who inaugurated the local singing groups. In the opera the heroine, Arline, was played by Virginia Broome Mullane, a farmer's wife who has two children, sings in a church choir. Thaddeus was Evan Davies who studied music in Chicago, now rides a tractor across the fat fields of Iowa. The Gypsy Queen was a chicken authority, Devilshoof one of the smartest farmers in Hardin County.

More than 8,000 Iowans praised the performance, drove away humming I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls and Then You'll Remember Me. A match for the singing was the ingenuity shown in the homemade costumes. A wine-colored cape had once been a feather tick. Old lace curtains had been doctored beyond recognition. The barefooted "gypsies" shook pie-plate tambourines, wore chicken-feed sacking which had been dyed yellow and scarlet, trimmed with bits of shiny tin. Average cost per costume: 13-c-.

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