#TopTen | No. 7: Time for SOLO to change its name [updated]

 

Last year I wrote and posted 801 posts. (So readers, I guess “we are the 801s”).
    Of all those posts, this from 31 August was the seventh most popular, a reluctantly-written report that became sadly necessary to write about an Objectivist website gone bad. Sad, because I was once associated with a site that’s now a cesspool. Necessary if only to say “it’s not what it says on the label.”
    And for reasons that should become obvious, I start with some joyous words of wisdom and conclude with a picture of a Muslim smiling …

---

Time for SOLO to change its name

Why have I posted so many recent posts exposing or explaining the odious Alt-Right movement? Because too many people I know and once valued have become infected by its virus, and intellectual hygiene demands that be acknowledged and rebutted (or an attempt at least made).

One local place that’s become a carrier for the virus is a site that’s still confusingly labelled “Objectivist,” although it’s now clearly anything but.  “SOLO” stands for sense-of-life Objectivism, as the site itself once did. It would be abundantly evident now however to any visitor of Lindsay Perigo’s site “for Sense-of-Life Objectivists” that it promotes neither – and should not be confused by anyone for an example of either Objectivism or a healthy sense of life.

Like me, many of you will know and will once have admired Lindsay. What he and his site have become, however, are no longer worthy of any admiration. It’s necessary to say this now publicly because Lindsay and I have shared stages together and been long-term collaborators on any number of projects over many years – and because some of my writing is still archived there on his site – and due to all this any reasonable person may assume I share all his odious views of today. I don’t. I very definitely don’t.

Mr Perigo’s once admirable obsession with opposing Islamist’s thuggery has now sadly morphed, as it has become more single-minded, from being just anti-Islamist to anti-Muslim to now being odiously anti-human. And repellent. After not having visited his site for some time I was dismayed to see what he had allowed his writing to become. Here are some few examples of how odious it’s gotten, discovered without even digging too deep after:

“We need to recognise that most existing ‘humans’ are just that: humans in inverted commas—anti- and sub-human, but existing in human form.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/9935#comment-123072

   "Yes, people are, by and large, scum. That much has become irresistibly apparent to me..."
    http://www.solopassion.com/node/10060#comment-124011

"Humanity as a whole (my God, how OrthOists will hate that expression) is still *sub*-human. "Sub" must be circumvented and superseded  ... I cannot imagine it will come about without an intervening cataclysm wherein all sub-humans are Karmally wiped out by the effects of their own mindlessness, and we can start over.
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253

These were not isolated views or from posts by rogue commenters, but a representative selection written and posted by the site’s host himself – who now quite routinely and without objection from the site’s regulars pronounces that Humanity “as a whole” is “sub-human.” This from a man who once excoriated what he then called “humanity diminishers.”

The diminishers have now been embraced. “Yes, people are, by and large, scum,” says Perigo as regularly as breathing and without any apparent irony on a site labelling itself “Sense-of-Life.” (Can you see that sentiment fitting anywhere within the parameters of that pic above?)

So blind has he become to what he’s embracing he can even suggest “OrthOists” (his latest neologism) will hate the phrase “humanity as whole” while failing to see that they may have an even greater problem with their condemnation as sub-human scum to be wiped out.

And who you might wonder are all these “sub-humans” for whose end he so fervently hopes? It seems clear it’s now anyone who disagrees with him. Including me, I guess, who was so labelled after suggesting earlier in the year that he had chosen an introductory selection of classical music for my blog not from the many more dramatic moments of romantic music he could have but from the more “tepid” end of the spectrum – his indirect response to my riposte arrived that very week; an answer, said Perigo, “to the pig-ignorant mewlings of the sub-humans who say Romantic-era music is ‘tepid’." That was me being pig ignorant, by the way, except it wasn’t – accuracy too being another casualty these days of Mr Perigo’s increasingly inward focus. [File it next to the amount of money he pathetically claims George Soros is handing out to Yaron Brook, who is apparently handing it all on to me. - Ed.]

And how about those he labels “OrthOists,” you ask, of whom he’s often so critical? It’s hard to know since neologising at the expense of clarity is an unfortunate Perigo fetish, but I think (this week at least) it must mean anyone who subscribes to the views espoused by Ayn Rand instead of those emanating from the fever dreams of the conspiracy theorists and worse with whom he now converses daily in his comments section of his site, where most of his site’s work is done.

So vast amounts of weirdness and worse, none of it emanating from either a healthy sense of life or the Objectivism he boasts as the site’s reason for being, and not just from his regular commenters and bloggers – many of whom are now explicitly white nationalists and “self-described “race realists” under whose influence, it appears, Mr Perigo is now…

    …leaning explicitly towards eugenics…

"There is no such thing as a right to breed.  Breeding is an imposition upon the bred without the consent of the bred. It's a form of initiating force. Then, Objectimorons will tell the involuntarily bred they have a duty to stay alive simply because they've been bred. This is rational??!! Benevolent??!! In this shitty world of Peter Keatings??!! ... The most important thing as far as the survival of Western Civilisation is concerned, aside from stopping Islamofilth immigration, is stopping The Filth from proliferating. In most cases, it's the only thing The Filth knows how to do. The Filth must be thwarted."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125444

"Anyway, there should be a new party proposing licenses to breed and to vote, wresting education from the child-molesters, along with my Not One Muslim immigration policy. I'd like to call it something provocative like the Western Civilisation Party."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/8744#comment-125979

    …denying individual rights …

"We don't have a right to life just because we're alive and have a human body, though that's what the OrthOist position amounts to..."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125418

    …expressing unrestrained support for the likes of Pauline Hanson …

"Move Over Brexit! Yoooooooge Setback for Filth in Australia!: Move over Brexit! Pauline Hanson, reviled by Filth, has just won a seat in the Australian Senate, and will possibly pick up two more once this weekend's election results become more clear... I personally delight in contemplating how horrified Obleftivists across the ditch in New Zealand will be at this advance for civilised values and human freedom.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10270

    …and for political assassination.

“If ever Obama were to be targeted by [a mass-murderer like a recent Islamist assassin], that would be poetic justice. I have no hesitation in saying that Obama is one ‘faggot’ whose martyrdom at the hands of the murderous bigots he has enabled would constitute Karmic justice ….”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10259

Lest you think any of this is intended as humour, it isn’t. I wish it were – but that too seems another casualty of this new turn

As for reason (what Rand called “the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men”; “the supremacy of reason” being, she said, “the primary concern of [her] work”) in the view of Mr Perigo today that pours out of his site like a torrent, reason is now such an impotent force in the world with none of the power the “Filth” has to move the world’s minds, that we must all lock ourselves up behind walls while embracing those like Hanson who repudiate it.

Reason is impotent at SOLO, it appears, and evil an actual force in the world – an explicit repudiation of the Objectivist position and an object lesson in how a single obsession held beyond reason has morphed into a near universal reason- and humanity-diminishment.

The single obsession was Islamist thuggery. Or so it began. And yet in all his years of opposing and writing about this, a decade-long singular obsession, while the targets have morphed his thinking about it has never matured beyond saying “Death to Islam” in several dozen different ways. No solutions at all, zero; his only attempt at a policy being “not one Muslim,” a policy enthusiastically embraced at the fever swamp of his SOLO site. As if it were possible to simply ban or bar or wipe out 1.5 billion people from existence.

And a man who once cheered Ronald Reagan demanding a Soviet Premier “tear down this wall” can now be found seriously insisting that America must “build a wall” itself, and not just along its Mexican border but along its Canadian border as well !

So much for sense of life and reason.

Furthermore, Mr Perigo has not just repuidated several of Objectivism’s tenets, but explicitly repudiated Objectivism itself, which he now calls "Obleftivism" (whatever that means). Instead, while repudiating the philosophy that the very masthead of his site trumpets and by which he attracts unaware young readers, he is now promoting something he calls "Authenticism" -- which in all the years he’s been talking about it has never bothered to fully define apart from arm-waving about most humans not possessing rights (which humans? "Filth?" sub-humans? people with whom he’s had a disagreement?) and putting humans' animal side before their human. And his own personal cultural and highly unphilosophical heroes now hail not from Objectivism at all but from the explicit alt-right of his commenters, including internet bores Stefan Molyneux (a white nationalist known to SOLO’s visitors as “Molly”), Paul Joseph Watson (who helps runs conspiracy sites like “InfoBores” and “Pathetic Planet”) an entity whom Perigo calls “my new hero,” and Milo Yiannopoulos etc., Milo for President! enthuses Perigo, echoed by those with whom he now converses on his website -- which wears the banner of an Objectivist site while repudiating the Objectivist philosophy.

So as sense-of-life goes, yet alone commitment to reason and just basic intellectual hygiene, there’s every reason to shun the site and demand he change the name, if not yet his direction.

Because, you know, Mr Perigo is free to adopt whatever repellent views and associates he chooses. And you, dear reader, are quite free to join him in the fraud. But just basic intellectual honesty demands he not label those views and the site they frequent as something they are not.

Time to change the name and just go full retard. (Or, if it’s not too late, to reconsider.)

But since, like the pic at the top of the page, this one at the bottom also represents almost everything to which the site formally known as SOLO now stands opposed (including the grin), I thought I’d finish with this:

.[Pics by ObjectivismForIntellectuals and PlanningForLiberty]

---

Tomorrow I post last year’s sixth-most popular post here at NOT PC, which as it happens is an exposé of one of Mr Perigo’s retarded new heroes. Stay tuned …

.

UPDATE:  A comment on this post is too good to leave lying fallow in the comments section, alerting me that just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, it actually just becomes more explicit …

Perigo waxing statist upon the "problem" of being outbred by Muslims:

"Licence to breed and licence to vote. Not One Muslim immigrant. Nothing uncivilised or unlibertarian
about any of that. Quite the contrary."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10371#comment-127052

As more simultaneously asinine and chilling statement you'd be hard pressed to find. It is now NOT uncivilised or unlibertarian to have the state examine your suitability for reproduction. Yet the state should not dictate our social or sexual choices. Or how much we drink. Or smoke. Or what we eat. Yet a huge bureaucratic apparatus vetting would-be parents is perfectly acceptable.
    This is an example of jumping the shark and advocating for the shark all at once.

.

Time for SOLO to change its name

 

Why have I posted so many recent posts opposing or explaining the odious Alt-Right movement? Because too many people I know and once valued have become infected by its virus, and intellectual hygiene demands that be acknowledged and rebutted (or an attempt at least made).

One local place that’s become a carrier for the virus is a site that’s still confusingly labelled “Objectivist,” although it’s now clearly anything but.  It should be abundantly evident now to any visitor of Lindsay Perigo’s site “for Sense-of-Life Objectivists” that it promotes neither sense-of-life nor Objectivism -- and should not be confused by anyone for an example of either. Nor of libertarianism.

I  say all this because Lindsay and I have shared stages together, and been long-term collaborators on any number of projects over many years, and any reasonable person may assume I share all his views. I don’t. And very definitely not the views he apparently harbours today.

Mr Perigo’s admirable obsession with opposing Islamist’s thuggery has now sadly morphed, as it has become more single-minded, from being just anti-Muslim to being odiously anti-human. And repellent. After not having been there for some time, here are some examples that sprang out without even needing to dig too deep:

“We need to recognise that most existing ‘humans’ are just that: humans in inverted commas—anti- and sub-human, but existing in human form.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/9935#comment-123072

"Yes, people are, by and large, scum. That much has become irresistibly apparent to me..."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10060#comment-124011

"Humanity as a whole (my God, how OrthOists will hate that expression) is still *sub*-human. "Sub" must be circumvented and superseded  ... I cannot imagine it will come about without an intervening cataclysm wherein all sub-humans are Karmally wiped out by the effects of their own mindlessness, and we can start over.
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253

Humanity “as a whole” is “sub-human,” he says routinely. This from a man who once excoriated what he then called “humanity diminishers.”

“Yes, people are, by and large, scum,” he says without irony on a site that calls itself “Sense-of-Life.” (Can you see that sentiment fitting anywhere within the parameters of that pic above?)

And who you might wonder are all these “sub-humans” for whose end he so fervently hopes? Anyone who disagrees with him, it seems. Including me, who had the temerity to suggest earlier this year that he had chosen an introductory selection of classical music not from the more dramatic moments of romantic music but from the more “tepid” end of the spectrum – I received my indirect response to my riposte that very week; “my answer,” said Perigo, “to the pig-ignorant mewlings of the sub-humans who say Romantic-era music is ‘tepid’." Which was me, except it wasn’t – accuracy too [such as this partial and highly-flawed account of a recent and rare public outing] being another casualty these days of Mr Perigo’s increasingly inward focus.

And how about those he labels “OrthOists,” you ask, of whom he’s often so critical? It’s hard to know since neologising at the expense of clarity is an unfortunate Perigo fetish, but I think (this week at least) it must mean anyone who subscribes to the views espoused by Ayn Rand instead of those emanating from the fever dreams of the conspiracy theorists and worse with whom he now converses daily in his comments section of his site, where most of his site’s work is done.

So vast amounts of weirdness and worse, and not just from his regular commenters and bloggers, many of whom are expicitly white nationalists under whose influence, it appears, Mr Perigo is now…

…leaning explicitly towards eugenics…

"There is no such thing as a right to breed.  Breeding is an imposition upon the bred without the consent of the bred. It's a form of initiating force. Then, Objectimorons will tell the involuntarily bred they have a duty to stay alive simply because they've been bred. This is rational??!! Benevolent??!! In this shitty world of Peter Keatings??!! ... The most important thing as far as the survival of Western Civilisation is concerned, aside from stopping Islamofilth immigration, is stopping The Filth from proliferating. In most cases, it's the only thing The Filth knows how to do. The Filth must be thwarted."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125444

"Anyway, there should be a new party proposing licenses to breed and to vote, wresting education from the child-molesters, along with my Not One Muslim immigration policy. I'd like to call it something provocative like the Western Civilisation Party."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/8744#comment-125979

…denying universal rights …

"We don't have a right to life just because we're alive and have a human body, though that's what the OrthOist position amounts to..."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125418

…expressing unrestrained support for the likes of Pauline Hanson …

"Move Over Brexit! Yoooooooge Setback for Filth in Australia!: Move over Brexit! Pauline Hanson, reviled by Filth, has just won a seat in the Australian Senate, and will possibly pick up two more once this weekend's election results become more clear... I personally delight in contemplating how horrified Obleftivists across the ditch in New Zealand will be at this advance for civilised values and human freedom.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10270

…and political assassination.

“If ever Obama were to be targeted by an Omar Mateen [i.e., the mass-murderer], that would be poetic justice. I have no hesitation in saying that Obama is one ‘faggot’ whose martyrdom at the hands of the murderous bigots he has enabled would constitute Karmic justice ….”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10259

Lest you think any of this is intended as humour, it isn’t.

As for reason, in his view it is apparently now an impotent force in the world with none of the power the “Filth” has to move it. So reason is impotent, and evil a force in the world – and a single obsession has become a near universal reason- and humanity-diminishment.

And yet in all his years of opposing and writing about Islamic thuggery, his decade-long singular obsession, his thinking has never matured beyond “Death to Islam.” No solutions at all, zero, beyond “not one Muslim,” a policy enthusiastically embraced at the fever swamp. As if it were possible to simply ban or bar or wipe out 1.5 billion people from existence.

And a man who once cheered Ronald Reagan demanding a Soviet Premier “tear down this wall” can now be found seriously insisting that America must “build a wall” itself, and not just along its Mexican border but along its Canadian border as well !

True story.

Furthermore, Mr Perigo has explicitly repudiated Objectivism, which he now calls "Obleftivism" (whatever that means). Instead, while repudiating the philosophy that the very masthead of his site trumpets and by which he attracts unaware readers, he is now promoting something he calls "Authenticism" -- which in all the years he’s been talking about it has never bothered to fully define apart from arm-waving about most humans not possessing rights (which humans? "Filth?" sub-humans? people with whom he’s had a disagreement?) and putting humans' animal side before their human. And his own personal cultural and highly unphilosophical heroes now hail from the explicit alt-right, including internet bores Stefan Molyneux (a white nationalist known to SOLO’s visitors as “Molly”), Paul Joseph Watson (who helps runs conspiracy sites like “InfoBores” and “Pathetic Planet”) whom Perigo calls “my new hero,” and Milo Yiannopoulos etc., [Milo for President! enthuses Perigo] as too do those with whom he now converses on his website -- which wears the banner of an Objectivist site while repudiating the philosophy.

So as sense-of-life goes, yet alone commitment to reason and just basic intellectual hygiene, there’s every reason to shun the site and demand he change the name, if not yet his direction.

Because, you know, Mr Perigo is free to adopt whatever repellent views and associates he chooses. But just basic intellectual honesty demands he not label those views and the site they frequent as something they are not.

Time to change the name and just go full retard. (Or, if it’s not too late, to reconsider.)

But since, like the pic at the top of the page, this one at the bottom also represents almost everything to which the site formally known as SOLO now stands opposed (including the grin), I thought I’d finish with this:

.[Pics by ObjectivismForIntellectuals and PlanningForLiberty]

.

Perigo: Twelve Aphorisms for Our Age—Variations on a Theme of Edmund Burke

"The only thing necessary for evil to
triumph is for good men to do nothing."

This adage above is usually attributed to Edmund Burke, though its origin is disputed. Whoever said it, it is especially apposite in our politically correct age when one is not permitted even to call anything "evil," much less take action against it. Muslims practise and propagate their barbarous superstition, academia and the media their pomo-Marxism, moronnials their aggressive airheadedness, etc., with an impunity lethal to civilisation, because too many of those who know better say nothing. With current events in mind, I have produced twelve variations of my own on Burke's theme.

1) The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to refuse to call it that.

2) The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to deny its reality.

3) The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to be fooled that it's good.

4) The only thing more evil than evil itself is the rush to accommodate it.

5) The greatest error of those who act in good faith is to assume that everybody else does.

6) The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men never to get angry.

7) The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men always to be too busy.

8 ) If good men lack the conviction of their goodness and the courage of that conviction, they will succumb to evil.

9) The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to spend all their time on Faecesbook.

10) When a solitary voice is denounced by frenzied mobs, it is in all likelihood the voice of reason.

11) When frenzied mobs denounce a solitary voice, they are doing it in all likelihood because their neighbours are doing it.

12) The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to eschew solidarity with other good men.

 

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Lindsay Perigo is a former television newsreader and interviewer, a present-day professional voice coach, an opera buff and capital music reviewer for Wellington’s Capital magazine, and the author of Total Passion for the Total Height and The One Tenor: A Salute to Mario Lanza (with foreword by leading tenor Simon O’Neill).
    He can be found at his blog, SOLO for Sense of Life Objectivists, his website LindsayPerigo.Com, and even—on rare occasions—at Facebook. Make the most of that.

Perigo: The intelligent truckdriver’s classical music starter pack

Last week I blogged on New York violinist Philippe Quint, who hit the streets to ask folk how come you’re not listening to classical music?
    In response, a commenter suggested “a top ten list for beginners.”
    ‘Great idea!’ I thought (suggesting there were a few I recommended in this post, which could be a good start).
    But how to begin that ideal list? How to pick out of ten-thousand candidates the top ten pieces to seduce the intelligent beginner who, at best, has only ever heard classical music in movies and games and as background noise at dinner parties? How to narrow it down? So, even better idea I thought: why not write one myself, and get well-known enthusiast for classical music Lindsay Perigo to write another—the idea being that we each prepare our own top-ten list for the person I like to think I write for –a fellow I like to call The Intelligent Truckdriver--and we see if anything sticks.
    So here, first up, is Lindsay’s list of Classics to seduce The Intelligent Truckdriver, something he calls ‘setruction’ . . .

---

Now that I have your undivided attention: Oirishman O'Cresswell of Not PC infamy has asked me for a list of ten pieces of music with which I'd attempt to seduce an intelligent truck driver. Alas, my seduction days are long over, and I never scored a truck driver anyway, intelligent or otherwise, even in my libidinous heyday—but if the object of the exercise is to awaken members of said vocation, and any uninitiated general readers, to the orgasmic joys of real music, I would regard truck drivers as much less of a challenge than university graduates dehumanised by pomowank and its corollary, headbanging caterwauling (or John Cage and his merciful but pretentious silences).

I have long argued that music of the Romantic genre and its offshoots, such as Hollywood movie scores, is unsurpassed in its capacity to ignite the spark of idealistic emotions, to excite our capacity for rapture—or, as I put it in my essay, Music of the Gods, to generate "value-swoon." For this to happen, though, the relevant receptors must be present, and alive, even if dormant. Nowadays, in the case of most entities that look human, these sensibilities have been killed off by decades of headbanging caterwauling, government schooling and the ethos of nihilism. Grandeur and glory stand little chance. But I'll proceed anyway.

The first selection, Warsaw Concerto, is a one-movement mini-concerto in the style of one of the Romantic greats, Rachmaninoff, written for the wartime movie Dangerous Moonlight. It's just ten minutes long, manageable even for state-dumbed-down moronnials. It will be a good indicator of the condition of your receptors. If this doesn't do it for you, I'd suggest you don't even think of proceeding any further! You are not a good candidate for setruction! Regardless of your vocation you'd assuredly be wasting your time! (All of the following are YouTube links. Be sure to push the button that eliminates commercials!)

The first four notes of that concerto's theme, by coincidence or design, formed the basis of a popular song by Carl T. Fischer, When You're in Love. Frankie Laine wrote the lyrics and topped the charts with it; Mario Lanza then sang it on his radio show. I can't imagine love's intoxication being extolled more ardently than this. The surging high notes are a wonder of the world. Imagine our truckie pulled up at the lights blasting this out the windows. No time for ‘setruction’; he'd be mobbed, and there'd be traffic bedlam:

As Richard Addinsell composed Warsaw Concerto, he surrounded himself with the scores of Rachmaninoff's 2nd and 3rd Piano Concertos and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Here's the Rach 3 played by the stupendous Martha Argerich. Piano is a bit jangly but the performance cannot fail to get our truckie's juices flowing:

As should be apparent by now, in Romantic music "it's the melody, stoopid!" Of course harmony and rhythm matter, and reached new heights of complexity in the Romantic era, but the overarching factor was the thing that makes music music. Melody. The tune. One of the greatest melodists was Chopin. Here's his Ballade No.1.

And another Arthur takes us back to Romanticism's beginnings. Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 is on the cusp between Classicism and Romanticism. Our brainy truck driver will note how Mozartian it sounds, and yet how it itches to cut loose, and sometimes does. The astonishingly young performer is a happy reminder that not all millennials are moronnials. And he throws in some more Chopin for good measure!

That concerto was one of the many works alluded to in Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio in A Minor, composed in memory of his piano virtuoso friend Nicholas Rubinstein. Joshua Bell is something of a weak link in the chain here, but the other two are breathtaking:

Another melody wizard was Max Bruch. His glorious Scottish Fantasy is bound to arouse our peripatetic truckie!

And while we're in the region (sort of) let's truck off to Norway for Grieg's verdant concerto:

No lightning introduction to Romanticism would be complete without at least one selection by Brahms, melody's Keeper of the Faith par excellence. Here's his sublime Alto Rhapsody. I'd suggest printing out Goethe's words ... follow ... wallow ... and repeat!

By now our intrepid truckie must be ready for a full-blown symphony. For this I'll repair to Tchaikovsky again—his triumphal Fifth, with the Boston Symphony and the matchless Leonard Bernstein. A fitting climax to our virgin truckie's introduction to rapture:

If he didn't get musical orgasm from that we must assume he's clinically, incurably, intractably frigid! But my hope is, he's been well and truly setructed, and I shall have fulfilled Oirishman O'Cresswell's un-pc brief!.

---

Lindsay Perigo is a former television newsreader and interviewer, a present-day professional voice coach, an opera buff and capital music reviewer for Wellington’s Capital magazine, and the author of Total Passion for the Total Height and The One Tenor: A Salute to Mario Lanza (with foreword by leading tenor Simon O’Neill).
    He can be found at his blog, SOLO for Sense of Life Objectivists, his website LindsayPerigo.Com, and even—on supremely odd occasions—at Facebook. Make the most of that.

---

NB: So there you go: 4 hours, 26 minutes of joy! Spotify users can enjoy the selection thus:

Humanity's Finest vs Sub-Humanity's Lowest

Guest post by Lindsay Perigo

Garrick Ohlsson Plays Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Jaime Martin, Conductor
Michael Fowler Centre, Fri Nov 13, 2015

In reviewing a concert at this moment in history, one is mindful of one's good fortune in being able to attend such an event without being shot, beheaded or blown up by Islamosavages. (How long can it be, one frets, before concert venues become like airport boarding gates?) One is mindful that the music of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms et al represents the cultural apogee of the values of the Enlightenment, which the terrorists wish to take down and replace with their vicious, totalitarian superstition. Last Friday evening was a fitting time to be savouring Beethoven's Leonore Overture No. 3, Mozart's Symphony No. 35 ("Haffner") and Brahms' Piano Concerto No.1, emerging as they did from an era when reason and freedom were on the march, and superstition and tyranny were in retreat. Had one known a Muslim was about to presage his carnage in Paris with "This is for Syria," one would have relished all the more the proud proclamation, "This is for life, and the grandeur of man" that this concert effectively was.

Alas, the dearth of youngsters in attendance, the surfeit of empty seats and grey hair, were testament to the demise of Enlightenment values in western countries with or without the assistance of mass-murdering superstitionists. (Indeed, the very concert in Paris at which these sub-humans wrought their destruction was by a rock band called Eagles of Death Metal who like to scream, "Haaaaoooowwww! I came to make a bang!")

But those who did venture out to hear the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra were able to bask in the Enlightenment's after-glow.

Simon O'Neill—When a Cover-Up Is a Good Thing!

If you’ve never experienced opera before then hang your head in shame, then your very best starting opera is Tosca, that “shabby little shocker” whose powerful score and rich drama have thrilled audiences. So opera novices should be thrilled to know that is being given this month and next in Auckland and Wellington respectively.
   Leading man in the production is NZ's international opera star Simon O'Neill, back from conquering the world and soprano’s hearts, who talks to Lindsay Perigo about life, singing, and how to kiss women properly on stage. Listen closely…

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Tenor Simon O'Neill loves coming back to Wellington. He did the Honours year of his music degree here, studying with the iconic Emily Mair, who, "along with my Aunt Eileen," is "my favourite person in Wellington." He says as a cultural hub, "Courtenay Place is second to none in the Southern Hemisphere." He's rapt about the "rehabilitation" of St James Theatre, where he'll be performing as Mario Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca from October 10-17, with what he calls "an A-Grade cast." (The opera opens in Auckland a week earlier.)

At 43, O'Neill is among the world's top ten dramatic tenors (“dramatic” being a formal sub-category of tenor, denoting a voice on the heavier, darker side of the spectrum), and in his own estimation among the top five when it comes to his specialty repertoire, German music of the late Romantic period (i.e., Wagner). Arguably he's as good as his pal and mentor, Domingo, only not as famous. Yet.

He hesitates to rank himself equal to his idol, and points out that in any event, where fame is concerned, times have changed. Recordings are what used to get an artist out there, but they're no longer being produced in such quantity as they were in Placido’s heyday; now "it's a struggle to get on Spotify." He does have a solo album out and will be doing another later in the year—but if these don't get him on magazine covers around the world, he's not worried. He loves the adulation he already enjoys; loves getting reviews that say things like, “As Otello, New Zealand tenor Simon O’Neill is tireless and thrilling”; “This is a reading of enormous panache, considerable vocal nuance and some of the most exciting top notes you are likely to hear on an operatic stage today”; and “I’ve never heard so many of the words in a live performance of the role.” He loves being hailed as “the most complete Otello since Domingo," not to mention "a Wagnerian of the first order." But even more, he loves being hailed as "Dad" by Tom, Grace and Violet. "Doesn't matter where I am in the world, thanks to technology I have breakfast with my wife and children every day. And the kids do their piano practice with me on their Ipads next to the piano!"

His path to the top was rough. Starting out as a baritone, O'Neill decided at a certain point to upgrade himself to tenor. The initial results weren't pretty. "I became what we now call a 'bari-tenor' at 24; by 26 my voice was in shreds. It fell apart in a very public way. I was doing La Boheme in Christchurch, but I couldn't get through it. We had to cancel the whole season. I was fired. I had to go home, and then to hospital."

What was the problem?

"I hadn't learned to 'cover' through the passaggio."

??!!

Well, however arcane that may sound, in serious singing it's a big deal. The passaggio is the transition between a singer's lower and middle, and middle and upper, registers. It's the latter "passage" that is relevant here—if a tenor doesn't modify his voice placement (‘cover’ it, as opposed to keeping it ‘open’) as he navigates from middle to upper, usually around the F-sharp mark, he'll end up in major strife. O'Neill has very stern advice for youngsters hoping for a singing career: that they learn from his experience. "If you haven't got your technique organised by your mid-to-late twenties, your voice is going to fall away." He reminds them of another of his idols, Giuseppe di Stefano, to whom this infamously happened, "singing all the way up to a High C without putting the 'cover' on. You can get away with it when you're young, and as brilliant as Di Stefano, but it's not what you'd do if you want a long career. My ideal is to be very, very disciplined in the passaggio area." He cites Carlo Bergonzi, Jussi Bjoerling (“my favourite Cavaradossi”), Mario Lanza and Luciano Pavarotti as master-coverers—especially Pavarotti, with whom he studied, who can be seen demonstrating the difference between a covered and uncovered tone on YouTube:

And here is Mario Lanza, covering on the fourth note of each of his arpeggios:

Still, O’Neill is a committed advocate of the view that such questions of technique are but a means to an end—the communication of emotion. To sit in on one of the master classes he conducts at Victoria University's School of Music is to hear him repeatedly admonish the young aspirants to live the meaning of the words they are singing. I observe to him that some of them seem to find this exhortation novel, strange and even alien, and ask if he agrees that too many—not all, but too many—sound like homogenised outcomes of a factory production line.

I do agree with that. I'd like not to agree, but I do. It’s not that they don’t have top-notch teachers—they do—but somehow ‘generic' has become a sort of 'go-to' place. Everyone all the same. Whereas what we're looking for is something special. Not just a pretty voice—not even a pretty voice, perhaps—but that extra something. And even more than that. Not only the talent, but the mind and the drive and the work ethic. Know your game. Bone up on the greats who’ve gone before. Know the commitment required and go for it. Talent alone is not enough. Our great rugby No.10 can kick spectacular goals, to be sure, and he clearly has a unique talent for it ... but he does as well as he does with that talent only because he studies and practises. Endlessly!

Those not willing to go all-out, he advises, should get some other day job. "Love the music, join the chorus, sing in a choir by all means—but go and get a B.Com!"

Returning to his upcoming appearance in Tosca, I remind him of the diva who threw herself off the parapet as is required at the end of the opera only to reappear several times thanks to a trampoline some miscreant stage hands had placed below. "I don't want to alert the work and safety people at the Beehive about our production, but let me just say our Tosca [Irish diva Orla Boylan] is having to learn to stunt-jump." And the kisses in this sizzler are not mere "stage kisses" either! O’Neill is genuinely enthusiastic about this production, his co-stars and the standard of opera emanating from New Zealand generally. “The flair, passion and imagination it should have—it’s all there! World class.”

Simon O'Neill, Wagner specialist, and Lindsay Perigo, Wagner-despiser, have a running gag where I say to him, "Your Wagner is great, dear—how I'd love to hear you sing some music at some point!" He responds with a regulation groan and a forlorn fantasy that he might have brought me to the cusp of enlightenment. As this conversation closes, I revive the gag, telling him how much I'm looking forward to hearing him perform Puccini, one of the greatest writers of music—one of the most irresistible melody-spinners—of them all. And I truly am. The boy from Ashburton who had to flee Christchurch for want of a cover-up but then found one and conquered the world, will assuredly pull off a Cavaradossi that would do Di Stefano, Pavarotti, Domingo, Bjoerling, Lanza et al—the titans who inspired him into this near-impossible lark in the first place—proud.

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Lindsay Perigo is a former television newsreader and interviewer, a present-day professional voice coach, an opera buff and capital music reviewer for Wellington’s Capital magazine, and the author of Total Passion for the Total Height and The One Tenor: A Salute to Mario Lanza (with foreword by Simon O’Neill).
    He can be found at his blog, SOLO for Sense of Life Objectivists, his website LindsayPerigo.Com, and even—on supremely odd occasions—at Facebook. Make the most of that.

#SaveTheHumans: Of Iconic Lions and Hysterical Hyenas

Guest post by Lindsay Perigo

The fathomless fatuity of Faecesbook infantiles and their ilk on or off the Internet—not to mention the warp in their moral compass—has been abundantly evident this past week as they have gone into outrage-overdrive over the killing by a recreational hunter of Zimbabwe icon Cecil the Lion. It was the wont of Cecil, a tourist attraction, to roam around Hwange National Park, where he had protected status. On the occasion in question he was lured out by hunting bait. The hunter, American dentist Walter Palmer, was unaware of Cecil's identity and celebrity status. Having acquired, he claims, a legal bow-and-arrow permit, and the right to hunt with it, Walter shot Cecil. But not fatally. Cecil fled. He was found two days later, despatched with a rifle shot and beheaded.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) co-founder and President Ingrid Newkirk released a statement that included the following:

Hunting is a coward’s pastime. If, as has been reported, this dentist and his guides lured Cecil out of the park with food so as to shoot him on private property, because shooting him in the park would have been illegal, he needs to be extradited, charged, and, preferably, hanged. [My bold—LP] To get a thrill at the cost of a life, this man gunned down a beloved lion, Cecil with a high-powered weapon. All wild animals are beloved by their own mates and infants, but to hunters like this overblown, over-privileged little man, who lack empathy, understanding, and respect for living creatures, they are merely targets to kill, decapitate, and hang up on a wall as a trophy. The photograph of this dentist, smiling over the corpse of another animal, who, like Cecil, wanted only to be left in peace, will disgust every caring soul in the world.

Hollywood bimbo Mia Farrow tweeted the address of Palmer's dental surgery, presumably so that deranged PETA-types would go there, do a Baltimore on his premises and do to him what, in other circumstances, Cecil might have done: tear him limb from limb. Or, perhaps, hang him.

Oscar Wilde characterised fox-hunting as "the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible." It may be that Mr. Palmer did something unspeakable. There may well be a legal and moral case to make against him for the terrible suffering he inflicted upon Cecil; regardless, what he did was not remotely—or shouldn't be—a hanging offence. That, however, is not my concern here. My issue with the unhinged zealots rampaging on Twit-Witter and Faecesbook is that few of them have any business invoking "caring souls" in any of their ejaculations whatsoever since their stunning indifference when it comes to murder and torture perpetrated upon human beings by totalitarian dictators shows them to be as uncaring as it's possible to be when it matters most. By their conspicuous silence, these people support those despots!

The regime of the Marxist Mugabe in Zimbabwe itself is a classic case in point. Mugabe has the blood of tens of thousands on his hands, beginning in the 80s and continuing to the present day. Notwithstanding an exemplary new constitution approved by referendum (allowed by Mugabe under extreme duress) in 2013, laws remain in place that stifle free speech and suppress dissent. While it is nominally otherwise, Zimbabwe remains in reality a one-party state. Women engaged in political opposition are routinely raped by Mugabe's goons. Journalists who write critically of him are still likely to be beaten up by those same goons. In its latest Freedom in the World Report, the respected Freedom House still classifies Zimbabwe as "unfree" (its other two categories being "free" and "partly free"). Which champion of Cecil the Lion, which PETA assassin, has ever had a word to say about this?

Gay sex continues to be illegal in Zimbabwe. According to Mugabe: "It degrades human dignity. It's unnatural, and there is no question ever of allowing these people to behave worse than dogs and pigs. If dogs and pigs do not do it [sic], why must human beings? We have our own culture, and we must re-dedicate ourselves to our traditional values that make us human beings. ... What we are being persuaded to accept is sub-animal behaviour and we will never allow it here. If you see people parading themselves as Lesbians and Gays, arrest them and hand them over to the police!"

Not just mutual penetration, but hugging, kissing and holding hands by members of the same sex are imprisonable offences. When the US Supreme Court gave the nod to gay marriage, Mugabe mockingly sought Obama's hand. (Actually, it would be a good match. Economically speaking, Mugabe is merely Obamarx on steroids, without pesky constraints.)

What men may not do to each other in Zimbabwe, Mugabe has assuredly done to the economy. Years ago he confiscated the farms of 4000 white farmers and handed them to blacks who had no clue what to do with them, fast-tracking his country to basket-case status. At the time I write this, 1 USD = 361,900 ZWD.

Again I ask, where are the PETA assassins and their fellow-travelers in all of this? Nowhere in sight. In truth, if you pursue them on such matters, you find that typically they're sympathetic to the regimes of Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, ISIS et al, since those regimes are anti-capitalist and anti-America ... and American capitalism, of course, is the origin of all evil, including cruelty to animals. PETA's hysterical hyenas may be up in arms about the posthumous beheading of Cecil, but where are they on the live beheading of humans by ISIS? People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are remarkably unfastidious when it comes to the unethical treatment of people. Indeed, we might say of Ms. Newkirk and her ilk that they are "overblown, over-privileged little people, who lack empathy, understanding, and respect for living human beings."

Rights pertain to the species capable of conceiving them—human beings. Cecil had no concept of rights—just ask any zebra or tourist he might have eaten. Humans may arguably bestow honorary rights on animals incapable of conceiving them (or protect them via ordinary human property rights), and prosecute each other for their breach, but let's keep our empathy for Cecil in perspective. It shouldn't blind us to or trump—much less justify—man's inhumanity to man.

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Lindsay Perigo is a former television newsreader and interviewer, a present-day professional voice coach, and a capital music reviewer for Capital magazine.

He can be found at his website, SOLO for Sense of Life Objectivists, his website LindsayPerigo.Com, and even—on occasions—at Facebook.

Feel the Ecstasy!

“Wouldn’t you simply die without Mahler!”
- Maureen Lipman in  Willy Russell’s Educating Rita

Guest review by Lindsay Perigo

There are two types of people in the world: those who worship Gustav Mahler and those who do not. For those who do, Mahler's music is a religious experience. Mahler is not so much a composer as a Deity, in whose Presence one shall inexorably convulse with ecstasy. As one who believes that ecstasy is the whole point of music, I empathise with the sentiment; I just don't, as a rule (huge exception noted below) get ecstasy from Mahler. I hear a plenitude of intimations of it, but an excess of agony and angst (there must be some agony and angst, of course, in order that we may better appreciate the ecstasy) is frequently woven in, and Mahler's point is invariably too long in the making. It's hard to feel ecstasised while muttering, "Oh, get on with it, man!"

Worse things than that have been said about Mahler, of course, and by great luminaries. The saintly Yehudi Menuhin viewed him as the last gasp of late Romantic self-indulgence, and Vaughan Williams put him down as a "tolerable imitation of a composer"; however, it would be imprudent indeed in 2015 lightly to dismiss a figure who has so clearly endured in spite of his critics, who does inspire religious devotion and whose premier prophet in the twentieth century was the genius, Leonard Bernstein.

In any event, neither devout Mahlerites nor non-believers had reason to complain at the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's rendering of Mahler's 5th Symphony at the Michael Fowler Centre on Saturday night. To the contrary. From the opening Beethovian trumpet-blast—tatatataaaaaa!!—through its Brahmsian Funeral March to its explosive conclusion several hours later (kidding—just), this oft-weird admixture of tragedy and triumph was rendered captivatingly by an orchestra in top form. Their conductor, Vasily Petrenko, cut a dashing figure on the podium. Handsome and athletic, he is what might in modern parlance be called a "hottie." Watching him during Mahler's less inspired moments made for a more appealing experience for this non-worshipper.

The incongruously beautiful fourth movement, Adagietto, puts paid to any notion that Mahler couldn't have written more melodiously more often had he wanted to. That's the one that, decades later, went "viral" after Visconti used it in his movie version of Death in Venice, and is assuredly among the most ecstasy-inducing compositions ever. As to why he didn't write that way more often, you'd have to ask Freud. Literally. Mahler had a session with him once, depressed and demoralised by his wife's affair with a younger man, and evidently revealed among other things that he couldn't quite take his own music seriously—he felt he had allowed it to be corrupted by "frivolous" street tunes he had heard as a child. Did he routinely hold back from such unbridled ecstasy as contained in Adagietto because he felt deep down it was parody? Or that he had to atone for his "frivolity" with avant-garde complexity and cacophony? Or was it just that his sense of life was so steeped in gloom that "unbridled ecstasy" was simply unsustainable, if not unthinkable? Whatever the explanation, it's a pity, because the surfeit of derangement—cacophony in pursuit of catastrophe, to paraphrase one critic—in much of Mahler probably contributed to the beginnings of the pervasive nervy, neurotic, ugly, incoherent, gratuitous noise in contemporary "music" and all around us in daily life.

But I digress. For all this non-worshipper's contemplative qualms, the NZSO's Mahler 5 was magnificent, as is everything it does. The roars of approval that thundered forth from the audience for soloists, conductor and composer alike were well-deserved. And the worshippers were indeed, as per my opening observations, convulsed with ecstasy. (There was one in front of me, and another to my right. They were distinctive, solitary figures who appeared to be wearing overcoats even though they weren't. They clearly believed their boy had been done justice—and no doubt, when it comes to their boy, they are extremely hard to please.)

As it happens, we had already been afforded a generous quotient of unbridled ecstasy courtesy that first-ish gasp—nay, typhoon—of early Romantic self-indulgence, Franz Liszt. This hero's Piano Concerto No. 2 was performed in the first half by formidable Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski. No trace of self-doubt in the emotionally robust Liszt, and none in the pianist's dazzling performance. Hearing the single-movement, 20-minute concerto played with such virtuosic mastery was alone, as they say, worth the price of admission.

**Power and Passion—Liszt and Mahler has yet to play in Christchurch (Wed, July 15), Auckland (Fri, July 17) and Hamilton (Sat, July 18). Whichever type of person in the world you are, be in quick—and feel the ecstasy!**

TICKETS & CONCERT DETAILS HERE.

PS: To get you as excited as I am, here together at London’s Royal Albert Hall are your pianist and conductor for the NZSO’s forthcoming ecstasy, performing some little-known number by Rachmaninov:

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Lindsay Perigo is a former television newsreader and interviewer, a present-day professional voice coach, and a capital music reviewer for Capital magazine.

This post first appeared at his website, SOLO for Sense of Life Objectivists.

Simon soars!

Guest post by Lindsay Perigo

"Tenor is not a voice; it is a disease!" harrumphs a woman who just happens to be a soprano, in the 1951 Hollywood bio-pic The Great Caruso. The movie featured one spectacular carrier of the "disease" playing another, and spawned veritable epidemics of it, most notably in the forms of Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras. And it didn't stop there:

In 1990, as a 19-year-old music student, I decided the world of opera would be for me. Three things influenced this decision: the first Three Tenors concert in Rome to mark the World Cup and Jose Carreras's heroic conquest of leukaemia; a fellow brass-player introducing me to Jussi Bjoerling's stellar recording of 'E la Solita Storia' from L'Arlesiana; and the purchasing of my first Mario Lanza CD—'The Great Caruso and Other Favorites.' Through this CD I fell in love with Mario Lanza's voice, his artistry—his complete persona. Tracks like 'Parmi Veder le Lagrime' from Verdi's Rigoletto and 'Musica Proibita' sailed out of the speakers into my relatively young operatic head and utterly captivated it. The sense of urgency Mario Lanza brought to everything, the clarity of his diction, the thrilling 'ping' in his voice, the way he unleashed his high notes ... I was enthralled.
—Simon O'Neill, Foreword to The One Tenor: A Salute to Mario Lanza, 2014.

Sense of urgency. Thrilling ping. Clarity of his diction. Way he unleashed his high notes. Simon O'Neill might well have been describing his own singing (though he's far too modest a fellow to do so in that way). It was after all of his performance as Otello in Sydney, 2014, that The Guardian wrote:

As for Otello, the New Zealand tenor Simon O’Neill commands from the minute he steps on stage. From his re-entry in Act 1 where he seeks to silence the fray ("Abbasso le spade!"/"Down with your swords!"), O’Neill’s vocal and physical presence never wavers. Taught the role by one of the great Otellos, Placido Domingo, and fresh from a season of Wozzeck at the Metropolitan Opera, it is with single-minded intensity that O’Neill’s Heldentenor pierces through the psyche of the beleaguered Moor.

And all the above qualities were evident in dazzling abundance on Friday night, June 12, 2015, as O'Neill joined stupendous soprano Christine Goerke and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen to present a "Wagner Gala" comprising highlights from Wagner's Ring Cycle.

As is well known, Wagner's Ring Cycle is a hundred times more preposterous than life and a thousand times longer, so selecting "highlights" of sufficient brevity to enable the audience to be released the same evening is no mean feat. And for singers, deemed by Wagner to be simply additional members of the orchestra with no special privileges, to make themselves heard above an orchestra that is on stage with them as opposed to being below them in an opera pit, is no mean feat either. To be candid, Siegfried and Brünnhilde were occasionally overpowered, and the charismatic Maestro Inkinen clearly had no intention of holding himself or his rampant orchestra (the magnificent beasts!) back in any way in one of their last performances together for a while—but for the most part the vocalists were sublimely audible above the competing cacophony. Physically and vocally, Ms Goerke is reminiscent of the towering Montserrat Caballe, and I was reminded of nothing so much as hearing Caballe, decades ago, in Tosca, her (and Jose Carreras's) glorious tones spinning off the walls of Covent Garden. O'Neill in turn often sounded like his friend and mentor, Placido Domingo; in fact, were it not for the pesky actual chronology of things, I'd be tempted to say Domingo reminds me of O'Neill! (As a technical aside, I'd add that the purity of Simon's "eeeeeeeeeee" vowel on high notes where opera singers often modify it beyond recognition is a contemporary wonder of the world.)

I am one of those philistines who ecstasise to tunes. When I go to the opera it's largely to hear melodies I can hum rapturously on the way home. I get grumpy with Wagner on account of the years that must pass, full of seeming dirge ("continuous music narrative"), between the tuneful bits. At a delightful, rustic Kapiti lunch the day before the Wagner Gala, Simon eloquently assured me that, au contraire, there is a point to every single note of Wagner's "continuous music narrative"; every note, in fact—even the most seemingly random and incidental—is "pure gold." It was clear to me that Wagner for Simon is not just a way of making a living—he lives for it and lives it. Sense of urgency. Thrilling ping. Clarity of diction. Way he unleashes his high notes. Mario, hardly a Wagner man either, would assuredly approve, so how could I not?!

The next evening, Saturday June 13, the orchestra accompanied the sweet-toned violinist Karen Gomyo, substituting for a pregnant Hilary Hahn, in a nimble rendering of Beethoven's Concerto in D, and then performed the entire Lemminkaienen Suite by Inkinen's compatriot, Jean Sibelius (usually one hears the second movement, Swan of Tuonela, as a stand-alone). This was a fitting finale to the "Inkinen Festival," as the two evenings combined were dubbed, a tribute to a conductor who prided himself, justly, on big, bold projects. He leaves to become Chief Conductor of the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Young, handsome and vibrant, he will assuredly enjoy a future as golden as his recent past: seven stellar years as Music Director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

If The Inkinen Festival hasn't yet come to a place near you, and there are still tickets available, snap them up. "Continuous music narrative" and all, these are some of Western Civilisation's finest moments, past and present.

NB: Aucklanders are enjoined to book now to enjoy the Wagner/O’Neill/Inkinen experience first-hand on Friday.

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Lindsay Perigo is a former television newsreader and interviewer, a present-day professional voice coach, and a capital music reviewer for Capital magazine.

This post first appeared at his website, SOLO for Sense of Life Objectivists.

Mohammed's Murderous Minions

Guest post by Lindsay Perigo

Savage superstitionists have just slaughtered eight journalists in Paris for the crime of making fun of their paedophile prophet. Had these sub-excreta been around in Voltaire's day, Voltaire's day no doubt would have been brutally shortened. The free-thinking French philosopher wrote of the murderous Mohammed:

But that a camel-merchant should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder; that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him.

It was Voltaire who also noted that "they who can make you believe absurdities can also make you commit atrocities." Haven't we seen that statement vindicated time and time again?!

In 2015, Voltaire's philosophical antipode, apart from Islam, is the Political Correctness and cultural relativism in whose name people make excuses for Islam.

New book by Lindsay Perigo: ‘The One Tenor’

Before the Three Tenors, there was just one. Lindsay Perigo tells the story of the overpoweringly charismatic singer of screen and record whom today’s singers still revere, and who has somewhat eluded biographers hitherto. From the new book’s Amazon description….

The One Tenor is a labour of love for life-long Mario Lanza devotee, New Zealand radio and television broadcaster Lindsay Perigo.

It is the bringing together of his best Lanza-related essays, critiques and interviews over the years, with significant new material exclusive to this book, including Perigo's take on the theory that Mario Lanza suffered from Bipolar Disorder. This theory was first touted in the biography of Lanza by Roland Bessette, with little explication. In The One Tenor Perigo interviews Bessette, who elaborates on his theory for the first time. Perigo responds in his stellar chapter, "Mario's Magic Madness."

The author stresses in his Introduction that The One Tenor is not a biography, but a chance to meet the overpoweringly charismatic Mario of screen and record who, in Perigo's opinion, has somewhat eluded biographers hitherto. Perigo argues that the uniqueness of Lanza lay in both his voice and soul, and that any portrait that fails to capture the latter is significantly incomplete. Soul abounds in The One Tenor.

The book is exceptional for its musical literacy. Perigo uses his own background as a singing student and connoisseur of voices to maximum advantage. In his time as a broadcaster, Perigo presented a series for New Zealand's National Radio called “Singers of Renown,” devoted to the great recordings of all great voices. He conducted extended interviews for that show and on TVNZ with Joan Sutherland, Sir Donald MacIntyre, Dame Malvina Major, Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras, Licia Albanese and Anna Moffo, along with Mario Lanza's conductor and accompanist, Constantine Callinicos. (The Callinicos, Moffo and Carreras interviews are below.) His wealth of knowledge about the vocal art permeates this entire collection.

Among the diverse features of The One Tenor are Perigo's critiques of several Lanza CD releases of recent times, including the very latest, out just this month, Mario Lanza—The Toast of Hollywood. Youngsters studying voice will find Perigo's observations about Lanza's technique and style illuminating, but these observations are not so technical as to baffle the layman.

Perigo's insights into Lanza are further informed by his friendship for many years with Mario's son, the late Damon Lanza, of whom Perigo writes movingly here in “Remembering a Buddy.”

Another gracious feature of the book is that Perigo makes way for another Lanza-buddy and internet radio personality, Jeff Rense, to write a touching guest-memoir.

 

The One Tenor boasts two Forewords, both by outstanding singers: Perigo's co

mpatriot, pre-eminent contemporary Wagnerian tenor Simon O'Neill, and one of the Irish Tenors now enjoying a distinguished solo career, Honorary President of Lanza Legend (see Lanzalegend.com), Anthony Kearns. Both speak glowingly of being awed and inspired by Mario Lanza.

Coinciding as it does with the release of the new CD capturing what Perigo calls simply "The Voice" in some of its

 

most dazzling performances, The One Tenor is a worthy addition to the Lanza literature and timely salute to Mario's magnificent voice and spirit.

Buy your copy at Amazon.

And while there, why not buy Perigo’s earlier collection of his writing, The Total Passion for the Total Height…