Handel dons a mohawk: worlds collide in a high-fashion feast of Baroque-punk splendour.

The complaint constantly levelled at supermodels (think Naomi Campbell) is that they tend to be “divas” on and off the catwalk. Like opera, high fashion is a world of high stakes. And if you’ve seen the opulent costumes and headdresses in the film Farinelli, the biopic of the Italian Baroque’s great castrato divo of the same name, it’s not hard to understand why German director Ludger Engels chose to explore the links between the rarefied worlds of opera and fashion through the showy virtuosity and extreme drama of Handel.

In Semele Walk he has slashed the hemline of the composer’s oratorio Semele to just 80 minutes of highlights, enrobed in the visual drama of bold designs by Britain’s reigning queen of fashion, Vivienne Westwood.

In the rococo interior of the Sydney Town Hall, the immense pipe organ loomed over a sleek, 30-metre runway. Young string players of Berlin’s Kaleidoskop ensemble were the first to ascend it, wildly coiffed and styled like rock stars. (How will they ever resign themselves to concert blacks again?) Handel’s stately overture was punctuated by the clumping of platform heels the size of ponies as...