I am often asked in the summer, when I spend one night in three watching opera, to identify the venue that supplies me with the most enjoyment.

Diplomatically, not wishing to show discourtesy to my hosts, I tend to offer a non-committal answer. Each place has a special charm, I might say, which is indeed the case.

Some festivals are smart, others less so, some adventurous in programming, others relying on established favourites to pull in the punters.

One company that ploughs an individual furrow is Opera Holland Park, founded by the Royal Borough of Kensington as long ago as 1996 in a notable act of public benefaction. Investec Wealth & Management are major sponsors.

Informality is a key note. There are no black-tie wearers but lots of folk in raffish coloured cords and expensive linen suits. Some women wear furs. Many supporters come from the multi-million-pound houses in the surrounding streets. They tend to ‘like a drop’ and are not afraid to get stuck in. Wine is commendably easy on the wallet.

Performances take place in a £1m theatre, open at the sides to the summer breezes and the screeches of the local peacocks. This was opened in 2007 in front of the ruins of Holland House, a centre of Whiggery in the 18th century, which was devastated by incendiary bombing in 1940. The house and lovely grounds were bought by London County Council in 1952 from its last private owner, the sixth Earl of Ilchester.

The park has happy memories for me as the venue for an afternoon of celebration on Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer’s wedding (July 29, 1981). The merriment was fuelled by a case of Veuve Clicquot supplied by the godmother of one of my friends. The park rangers were insistent on securing our departure at the end of the revels.

There was plenty of fizz, too, on June 2 as this year’s OHP season was launched with a brilliant production of Puccini’s Il Trittico. The wine was an English one, Nyetimber, made from vines grown in West Sussex and Hampshire. This has become a favourite of mine since the reopening party at The Perch in Binsey.

Before the performance we were given the news that from next year (actually October this year) OHP is going it alone, splitting from the Royal Borough and being run as an independent charity.

The programme for 2016 has already been announced, continuing the tradition of interspersing popular works with others more unusual. Mascagni’s rarity, Iris, is followed by Puccini’s La Bohème, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus and Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.

Plenty there to delight fans, who include lots of opera buffs from Oxford. Opera Holland Park’s performances can almost be considered local events, considering how easily they can be reached from here. The Oxford Tube stop is just up the road and the other tube supplies a five-minute ride from Paddington.

The two opening productions earned rave reviews. Of Il Trittico, for instance, The Times’s Neil Fisher wrote; “What’s most striking about Stuart Stratford’s conducting are the contrasts he finds, teasing out the dark claustrophobia of Tabarro, the glitzy transparency of Suor Angelica and the zest and brio of Gianni Schicchi.”

Jonathon Dove’s Flight, which followed, was the first London production of a work that Oxford audiences may remember from Glyndebourne’s tour of 1998, for which it was commissioned.

Dove is flavour of the month just at the moment, his opera for children, The Monster in the Maze, having just been given its UK premiere at The Barbican by the London Symphony Orchestra under conductor Sir Simon Rattle.

Critics were less happy about OHP’s production of Verdi’s Aida, which one referred to as a drunken knees-up in a museum’s Egyptology wing.

For me, the modern staging worked well, and there was nothing to find fault with in the singing, particularly that of Peter Auty as Radames.

Next up is Italo Montemezzi’s L’Amore dei tre Re, a revival of a production first seen at Holland Park in 2007.