Opera Holland Park's only black tie evening: Tuesday 10 November 2026 at Drapers' Hall, with the company's principal artists singing over dinner.
Opera Holland Park was founded in 1996 and performs in a temporary canopied theatre raised each summer against the ruins of Holland House, a Jacobean mansion of 1605 that was gutted by incendiary bombs in one night in September 1940. The London County Council bought the grounds in 1952, and Kensington and Chelsea put the first canopy over the performance space in 1987. The company grew out of that arrangement and is now an independent charity with an international reputation, still playing to a park.
A theatre that exists for nine weeks of the year has no building to fall back on, which is why the company sings at close range for a room once a season. The gala is the one black tie evening in its calendar and the only time its principals perform indoors in the city. Singers, creatives and company sit at the tables rather than apart from them, and the company’s Young Artists scheme puts performers at the start of their careers into principal roles the same way.
The 2026 gala is at Drapers’ Hall on Tuesday 10 November, reception at 6.15 and carriages at eleven, with the principals singing over dinner. Tickets are £425 a head or £3,350 for a table of eight, and the proceeds go to the Inspire education programme and to the 2027 season. Drapers’ Hall is a livery hall the public rarely sees inside.