Dan Visconti, a composer whose music has been described as “a cheerful and colorful assault on the senses” by the New York Times, has spent the past year-plus exploring how to create collaboratively with the audience through a new project in partnership with Bearded Ladies Cabaret composer Heath Allen and librettist/director John Jarboe. Together with members of the cabaret ensemble and the Opera Philadelphia Chorus, they have been tapping into the interactivity of performance. 

In a recent Huffington Post blog, Dan describes the creative process of ANDY: A Popera. "Art is seeing ourselves seeing each other seeing," Dan writes. "It is a heightened state of consciousness - an aesthetic experience as opposed to an anesthetic one - in which we become fully aware of the mystery of our selfness and sameness. All performers are also audience members in the sense that they also bear witness, react and harbor expectations; and all audience members are performing for the artists, their dates, themselves -- just look at how many theater and opera-goers look positively costumed for the occasion!"

Read Dan's full story, "Inviting the Audience to the Party," at Huffington Post