Will you miss your Beverly Sills moment?
by Jean Martin
Every once in a while I find myself pondering whether or not someone I know hasn’t missed his or her Beverly Sills moment. Sills, known as Bubbles to her friends and fans, was a coloratura soprano well known for her outstanding performances in concerts and operas.
Then one day in 1980, when she was still able to perform such challenging roles as the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Magic Flute, she suddenly gave it all up. She just upped and quit. Fans and critics alike were thunderstruck. She was still at the height of her powers, and she just walked away.
Sills explained her decision in this way. She wanted to leave before fans and critics noticed that it was well past time for her to leave. She wanted to go out while she was still at the top of her game. She didn’t want to be remembered as just one more poor ruined soprano who didn’t know when to get off the stage.
Right at that moment she taught a lesson that none of us should ever forget. But we do, constantly.
I thought about this when Jay Leno put a strangle hold on the NBC network and refused to go. He made them commit to a disastrous nightly prime time program that nearly tanked the network. Then when the affiliate stations around the country began dumping the show because it provided such a poor lead-in to their news programs, NBC went back into negotiations with Leno.
Eventually Conan O’Brien was jettisoned, and Jay was back in his original time slot. One look at the Tonight Show as it functions now might cause us to wonder whether Jay didn’t miss his Beverly Sills moment back in 2008.
Last Thursday when Hosni Mubarak did his house cat imitation, the Beverly Sills option came to mind again. Mubarak made some moves to leave:”Yes, I’ll leave. Not I guess I won’t go after all.”
If there ever was a Beverly Sills moment, it had already passed him by. He just didn’t recognize it.
Other dictators have missed their Beverly Sills moments and never lived long enough to regret it. Perhaps Mubarak will live long enough to settle into a nest somewhere and take comfort from his billions, but history will record that he surely missed his Beverly Sills moment.