London Time
15 December

Just over 24 hours in London, for me.

Many months ago now, I spotted that my favourite light tenor, Juan Diego Flórez, was to be singing at Covent Garden this season, so I planned a bijou trippette around taking in a performance.

I bought the Covent Garden ticket and the train ticket over the Internet and researched a cheap and cheerful hotel near to Kings Cross and set off. In the event, I had a really great time.

The opera was Gaetano Donizetti's Don Pasquale given in a production by Jonathan Miller. The main criticisms of the first night were an overly busy production, a somewhat squally soprano and some lumpen conducting. All of these deficits seemed to have been ironed out in the intervening fortnight as the performance I saw was an unalloyed joy.

The story is the traditional one of the old man trying to marry a younger women an getting his come-uppance. However, the opera and the production take the situation seriously enough for it to be funny. No-one in the set of characters is a particularly nice person but they all learn something from the working out of the plot.

As ever, I loved Snr Flórez. His solos and concerted passages were highlights of the evening. However, his duetting with Tatiana Lisnic (the Norina) did not pay the hoped for dividends. She was fine in herself. The two of them together just did not blend. Maybe this is the weak link in Snr Flórez's enormous talent. I remember that his duetting in La sonnambula was similarly compromised.

Simone Alaimo as Don Pasquale was very good and maintained the excellent impression I received of him in La Cenerentola nearly four years ago now. His partner in patter was Alessandro Corbelli who is another great find. How lucky I am to live in an age when there are so many splendid proponents of this repertoire which I love.

Overall, I'd say that it was a four star experience.

The following morning I was up betimes, breakfasted and out onto the streets before 9am. Some book and CD shopping followed and then down to the National Gallery via a fine coffee and cake at Costa Coffee on Trafalgar Square for one of the high treats of the year.

The Raphael exhibition there has been high on my wish list of things to do and so I made damn sure that, whilst I was there in the Capital, I hustled on down and had a look for myself. Over the past decade, I have spent some of my happiest gallery hours in this building whether just looking around the permanent collection or spending time with Rod looking at Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus or attending Seeing Salvation and A Private Passion.

This show did not disappoint. It took us on a chronological journey through Raphael's early development as he established his craft and his position. It showed how his art developed and who influenced him. It was a model of what an exhibition can be and I shall, unhesitatingly, give it five stars.

A number of insights occurred to me whilst there. This cartoon of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist by Leonardo was singled out for inclusion and comment because of its elaborate composition with interlocked bodies and twisted torsos. You could see how immediately Raphael saw the potential of this and began to include such ideas in his own work.

The twist in the torso of Raphael's portrait of St Catherine would have been beyond him before meeting Leonardo and Michaelangelo. And it's this sense of energy released in the torque which is at the heart of High Renaissance art as figures in paintings move away from four-square poses into more dynamic and anatomically correct postures.

I also decided that Raphael was a complete tart. He took whatever he wanted from whomever without much grace of favour. Yes, he transmuted the ideas of others into something of his own but he was just shameless in the way that he appears to have made use of everyone he came into contact with. I rather suspect he would have shagged anyone to find out a little bit more about secret techniques and ingredients. Michaelangelo was particularly embittered with him. I reckon there was a bit of how's your father on the side. Mind you, I don't believe for a minute that Raphael was gay as Michaelangelo was. His drawing of the master's statue of David shows no interest whatsoever in the posterior. How un-gay is that?

All in all then, it was 24 hours very well spent and a very uplifting way to begin my Festive jollities.