NEW YORK -- Membership does have its privileges. Wednesday evening in New York, a few dozen members of an elite club gathered in the splashy new Trump World Tower across the street from the United Nations, a gold and glass sliver that rises 72 storeys above the East River. When the tower was being erected a couple of years ago, Donald Trump bragged it would be the tallest residential building in the world. The distinction lost some of its appeal after Sept. 11, 2001, but that didn't stop members of Cierge from showing up for free drinks and a brief show at the ground-floor World Bar.

Cierge is an invitation-only personalized shopping service that Sony introduced just over a year ago. The story is that after Howard Stringer became the CEO of Sony U.S. in 1998, all of his Very Important Friends badgered him with so many personal requests for the latest high-tech Sony gadgets that he decided to offload his pals into a dedicated concierge program, and expand it for all those movers and shakers who were worth personal attention. So now the elite -- that is, celebrities and the 1 per cent of Americans who benefit from the tax policies of George W. Bush -- can get access to the services of a personalized shopper as well as 24-hour technical assistance, in case they need help wiring up their new $12,000 plasma-screen TV at 2 o'clock in the morning.

They also get invitations to exclusive events like Wednesday night's American debut performance by OperaBabes at the World Bar, which was graced by the Tommy Hilfiger teen model and first niece, Lauren Bush. The bar is a bland room that feels like an afterthought to the tower, where condos run from $1-million to $16-million (U.S.), but it has received press for a typically Trumpian stunt: Serving what it calls "the world's most expensive cocktail," a $50 concoction of Remy XO, white grape juice, lemon juice, bitters and a shot of Veuve Clicquot. Most wise men would never mix those liquids. Some might say the same about the disparate elements that combine to make the OperaBabes' sound.

The United Kingdom always seems to be crowning a new and unusual musical act every few months, and OperaBabes is one of the latest. Karen England, a 28-year-old mezzo soprano, and Rebecca Knight, a 32-year-old soprano, are classically trained singers who met six years ago when they joined the London City Opera for a tour of The Magic Flute in the United States.

After the tour, they paired up to busk outside Covent Garden to earn a few pounds for singing lessons. A talent scout who was taken with their fetching looks and their slinky way with an aria booked the women to sing at the final of soccer's FA Cup. Within days, five record labels came a callin', and Sony won the bidding.

Sony Classical is depending on the Babes to make some dulcet noise for the label. Classical sales are down across the industry because traditional customers don't feel much excitement about buying yet another recording of, say, Bach's Partitas or the Goldberg Variations. Most classical labels now depend to some degree on either babelicious acts like bond, the British quartet that posed nude for their debut album two years ago, or on crossover artists like Andrea Bocelli or Charlotte Church, to support the rest of the artists in the stable.

Sony just wrapped an awful year, and the Babes are an important part of the label's intended comeback. So important, in fact, that Howard Stringer himself showed up on Wednesday, accompanied by the newly appointed head of Sony Music, Andrew Lack, in his first public appearance.

The Babes' debut album, Beyond Imagination, contains untraditional versions of more than a dozen arias, from One Fine Day (Madame Butterfly's Un Bel Di)to something called There's a Place, which Rebecca Knight adapted from Dvorak's New World Symphony. The last track on the disc is a dance-mix version of the Flower Duet from Lakme, a convulsive techno-house swirl of voices, keyboard blips and drum machines that sounds like a Parisian DJ crashed the Met.

"Especially in the U.K., people want to pigeonhole you," says Karen, who has long blond hair in a feathered Farrah Fawcett style. "They want to put you in a category. You've got to be like somebody else. And what people have realized is that we're not really like anybody else."

These are heavily produced pop affairs from the grandiose Lloyd Webber/Jim Steinman school of music production, featuring a musical grab bag of bombastic effects, from the gut-punching Japanese taiko drums of Kodo to swelling synthesized strings, crashing cymbals, swooping and screeching choruses, a stadium-friendly rock-steady beat, and vocals that have been overmixed and cleansed of anything resembling character. The Babes sound like the Cirque de Soleil house band, or the soundtrack to a luxury car commercial. (Turns out one of their numbers was used for a British Airways ad.)

It is all in the name of bringing high art to the masses, but not everyone is so happy about the Babes innovations. Last spring the opera star Sir Thomas Allen attacked the classical-music industry for dumbing down its offerings.

This upset the Babes. "We really enjoyed busking, and liked the fact that we could attract a really diverse and wide-ranging audience, from children to grannies to rich people, poor people, fat people, thin people -- you name it," says Rebecca, who wears daring corsets and sparkly blue eye shadow and sports a couple of tattoos. "And we looked at this as the same sort of thing but casting the net a lot wider by doing an album that anybody could buy. We just like to make it clear that classical music is accessible to everybody, really, and it shouldn't just be for the elite."

Not everyone at the Cierge event bought the Babes's vaunted uniqueness. "The performance was mediocre," sniffed Matthew Braks, a television news producer. "I expected them to be doing something new. Enya's done this, even Bjork has done this to a certain degree. If they're not going to sing opera, let's not call them 'opera babes.' The emphasis seems to be on the 'babes.' "

When they sing, the Babes have a habit of pulling back their shoulders and defiantly thrusting out their chests. Standing side by side at a pair of microphones with a recorded backing track, they reach across the space dividing them and gently link their hands, like the best of friends. Before they charge up a particularly loud or difficult passage they gaze meaningfully at each other, like Thelma and Louise moments before that cliff jump, pulling strength from each other's souls as practised smiles spread across their faces.

The act carries an us-against-the-world whiff of female empowerment. Some might think the message is undercut by the chests and cheekbones poking out from the CD booklet, and the slinky skirts and animal-print outfits they model in the many photos. Karen admits that by playing up the sex quotient, they risk not being taken seriously.

"Although the name is catchy, it does have problems, because opera and babes don't go very well," she says.

"A lot of people are surprised we can actually sing."

Rebecca adds, "People concentrate on the babes and not so much on the opera part."

Karen nods. "Yes, most of our interviews are about lip gloss rather than the music."