Osud (Fate)

Janáček’s score for this hidden gem has an expansive lyricism that glows with some of his most incandescent music.

Osud was spurred by a chance meeting in a Moravian spa town in 1903 between Janáček and a woman who complained to him that she had been unflatteringly portrayed in an opera by another composer a few years earlier. Infatuated with the woman, and determined to present her in a rosier light, Janáček set to work on his own opera.

Janáček’s original outline for Osud subsequently underwent many adjustments. What finally emerged was the story of a composer, Živný, who has written an autobiographical opera about his obsessive, tormented love for Míla, with whom he has a young son. The last act is unfinished, however: Živný’s opera cannot be concluded until its story has been lived...