That One Thing
One thing that strikes me about Bizet’s work is that Carmen is really the one thing he’s noted for. Judged a failure when it first opened, it became perhaps the western world’s best-known opera. There are so many identifiable numbers in it, from the Habañera to Torreador, that just about everyone who attends the opera knows or will recognize one of the numbers. Just getting that one thing to succeed; sometimes that’s all it takes.
The project I have lined up following Carmen is playing Robert in David Auburn’s Proof. There you have the same issue – a brillant mathematician who did his best work by 25 and spend the rest of his life slowly going insane. Einstein spent the rest of his life after relativity searching for the elusive unified theory. Just one thing.
It’s hard sometimes not to feel that way, that you’ve already done your best work, and the rest of your life is going to be spent sitting about still looking for that elusive one thing. And clearly, many people never find that one thing that catapults them from unknown to well-known. Bizet was dead by 35, but he got out that one thing. I’m pretty sure mine hasn’t come around yet, and it’s a question as to how long it may be before it shows up or I create it. An interesting question, at that. -twl
