Don't get me wrong: a good pun can be a beautiful thing. As with all wordplay, however, there's a time and a place. Should a pun of stomach-clutching awfulness be used to market an opera festival?

Grimeborn, "London's hippest opera festival", opened on 15 August at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston. That's right, Grimeborn. According to the Daily Telegraph opera critic Rupert Christiansen, whose review of a previous festival (it's now in its fifth year) is quoted on the press release, "The place was packed out with a crowd so cool and buzzing that I felt I had crashed some very hip party."

Isn't there a rule against using the word "hip" twice in a press release? There should be a rule about using it once. Only those who identify an unimaginable gulf between themselves and what they are describing as hip use the word. It's a word for geography teachers. It's the adjective estate agents use to sell Shoreditch lofts to bankers. It's how Dr Evil describes himself in Austin Powers. "I'm with it. I'm hip," he insists, before performing the Macarena dance - a wonderful scene in cinema history.

Despite all this, Grimeborn sounds quite good. Better than that, it sounds great. This year, they're putting on a new production of Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw and a reworked version of Handel's Alcina. There's also a performance of Janácek's The Diary of One Who Disappeared, a free show by the Arcola's Youth Opera Cabaret and Simon Callow's adaptation of operas by Mozart and Antonio Salieri. (There's no grime, mind - I'm not quite sure why the organisers winched that into the name. Some people will do anything for a pun.)

There are other things to like, too. Shows are produced on tiny budgets so that tickets can be sold at the admirably low price of £15, and new and younger performers are encouraged and supported. It's just what opera needs - to be wrested from the hands of people in swanky suits and pearls and injected with life, youth and a sense that it isn't the preserve of the wealthy and well-picnicked. I just wish, with all my heart, that it wasn't called Grimeborn.

Grimeborn continues at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston, London E8, until 27 August.
For tickets visit: arcolatheatre.com