Recipe for success

1. Toil for years at a career that doesn't support you, mainly helping others redo their work 2. Produce a few deeply flawed products with occasional flashes of talent

3. Finally produce something that breaks all the rules for what your customers want.

4. Resist all suggestions for changes from your collaborators, who describe it as undoable. 

5. Unveil the work to shocked incomprehension from the hostile audience and critics.

6. You die in misery 3 months later.

Congratulations, you have just produced the most successful opera of all time.