Things to Do in South Saint Paul

Discover your inner Davy Crockett with today's Groupon. For $5, you get admission to the 40th Annual Minnesota Sportsmen's Show any day from Wednesday, January 13, through Friday, January 15, at the Saint Paul River Centre. Gawk at great outdoorsy goods (RVs, motor homes, travel trailers, fishing boats), attend free fishing and hunting seminars, plan your next excursion, and witness a water-skiing squirrel purchasing a motor home.

Located in the Dayton’s Bluff area, historic Mounds Theatre is a great spot to experience live theatre, movies, and occasional paranormal encounters. Knotareel Getaway Cruise is an interactive dinner-theater production written by Greg Eiden that features musical comedy and a gaggle of mimicking pirate parrots all named Polly. You’ll ward off scurvy thanks to the show’s dinner menu, which offers roasted chicken with herb vinaigrette, fettuccine or linguine (tossed with olive oil, fresh basil, and garlic), vegetable medley, field green salad, and chef’s choice dessert. You’ll also be supporting a good cause since the theater is home to the Portage for Youth, a nonprofit organization serving disadvantaged youth that collaborates with arts and cultural groups.

Minnesota Opera transports audiences into the romantic, opulent, and dangerous world of eighteenth-century Parisian high society with the opera classic that inspired the feature film Moulin Rouge!. Led by Georgia Jarman, La traviata tells of the descent of a courtesan who must repress her love for a younger man and her obsession with anything in a ruffled collar. The opera—featuring such timeless arias as the intoxicating opener "Libiamo Ne' Lieti Calici" and the tender "Un Di, Felice Eterea"—is sung in Italian with a translation projected above the stage for those following along from their seats. Audience members choosing not to spend their night at the opera reading can simply listen to the soaring score of Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece, which perfectly captures the passion and underlying sadness of its world of beauty-obsessed libertines, much like a dove's song captures the feeling of putting your toe socks on the wrong feet.

For $7, today's side deal gets you a general ticket to one of two opening weekend night performances of Pangea World Theater and Teatro Del Pueblo's production of The House of Bernada Alba (a $15 value). Choose from Saturday, April 10th, or Sunday, April 11th, both at 7:30 p.m. at the newly remodeled SteppingStone Theatre in St. Paul.