With two and a half weeks before opening night, the Fire Starters Opera Company was finishing costumes and sets, rehearsing arias and making sure mailers went out — and that was just before recess.

Mary Ruth McGinn’s 19 third-grade students at Stedwick Elementary School in Montgomery Village have spent the school year writing and composing their own opera, called “The Storm Within.” The story follows a sister and brother who discover the existence of a long, lost sibling while at a campground. It centers around the theme of longing — whether to meet a sibling or to fit into a group.