AMHERST, N.Y. — Most high schools put on a spring musical but Amherst Central High School is doing something a little different this year.

Instead, they're putting on an opera, something that takes a lot more training. In fact, they even brought in opera singers from New York City and Chicago to help get students ready for opening night.

The singers, who are from Western New York, were home because of the pandemic and a teacher brought them in to put on the unique show.

The students are no strangers to vocal drills. They've been doing them for months as they prepared for their spring production called "Strawberry Fields," which they produced as a virtual show this year.

It centers around an opera-loving New York socialite that, due to the onset of Alzheimer's disease, imagines she is at the opera as she sits at the John Lennon Memorial at Strawberry Fields.

And the opera aspect is what Director of Choral Activities Justin Pomietlarz says makes this production unique.

"The level of signing that's required to pull it off is a super high level," said Pomietlarz. "There is nowhere for the kids to hide in their singing. Opera is about the beauty of the human voice and getting singers to emote everything they want and convey that through their singing and voice."

Because of this challenge, they brought in professional opera singers who are actually from Western New York.

"So we brought it some vocal coaches and people were home from COVID," said Pomietlarz. "Metropolitan opera singers, people who were supposed to be at Chicago Lyric and I called them saying, 'hey, would you like to help with a high school opera production? I could use your help.'"

The main characters are seniors John Calandra and Mattison Harvey. They say it was a fun challenge.

"It's completely different with the vocal training and how you still have to pronounciate so people understand," said Harvey. "It's really something special and not many people our age understand opera."

"Getting those higher notes was challenging," said Calandra. "But then with the vocal coaching of the professionals, once I hit those notes it was incredible."

They say they're grateful to have a production during their last year of high school when they weren't sure what would happen after COVID-19 threw plans into the air.

"Not many schools are able to do the shows we did, but this is as close to a live performance that you can get," Calandra said. "So I'd really recommend it."

Being that this is a pre-shot virtual show, it required all hands on deck to produce a much different type of school play. One that is also only 40 minutes, so much shorter than most plays.

This year we got a show that was smaller and changed our crew perspective but I think this show did a great job of making us focus on the smaller details. We can really convey emotion,

"It's totally different than what we've ever done before," said orchestra member Stephanie Froebel. "Usually, our orchestra has upwards of 30 plus kids and this time it was only one to two on a part and we were each responsible for our own part."

"It required a lot more tenacity this year because when we are recording, we have to take multiple takes so whatever take they use, we are on top of it," said Owen Grubb, sound technician.

The students say they are proud of what they've produced and they can't wait for people to see it.

The production premieres online this Friday.

For more information about the production and a link to buy tickets, click here.