A bunch of multicolored Marilyns. Image via @operaphila on Instagram.

This month, starting on Sept. 10, Opera Philadelphia joins forces with The Bearded Ladies Cabaret for the third installment of their collaborative musical melange, “ANDY: A Popera.” The production, supported by a grant from Knight Foundation, draws on elements of cabaret and opera to create an improvisational performance that takes its cues from the audience as much as from its arrangement.

Based on the legendary persona of Andy Warhol more than the person himself, the so-called “popera” is inspired by the popular culture present in Warhol’s artwork, as well as the contemporary world in which pop art and opera can join forces on the same stage. The Bearded Ladies–an experimental, gender-bending, witty and glamorous assembly of singers and actors–lead this in-your-face brand of theatrical mashup, taking the strange marriage of highbrow and lowbrow even further. Where else do you expect rock vocals alongside trained opera virtuosos and Brillo pads?

Over the course of the action, this romp delivers equal parts commercialism and artistry. We find versions of Warhol stars Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling and Valerie Solanas with contemporary twists, as well as Campbell’s soup cans, Marilyn Monroes and more as they sing and dance across the stage and amongst the crowd.

Brillo pads and commercial art. Image via @operaphila on Instagram.

In “ANDY,” the concept that hangs over the entire show revolves around what happens when a person becomes a brand. While he was alive, the distinction was blurry–in part due to Warhol’s own work–but some three decades after his death, his larger-than-life reputation lives on: in prints, tote bags, t-shirts, a dedicated Pittsburgh museum and now a cabaret rock opera. Always one to raise questions about the areas where fine art, mass production, celebrity and advertising overlap, Warhol again finds himself at the center of attention in Philadelphia. This run of “ANDY: A Popera” will go through Sept. 20.