Leoš Janáček, Osud (1907)

That title means "fate" or "destiny;" I just left it in the Czech so it would be more distinctive.  It was going to be on Operavision late last year, but was cancelled due to COVID.  Did you think that would stop me from seeing it?  HA!  You FOOL!  There's a high-quality production here, and a libretto here.  Still, it's definitely the least-performed  Janáček opera I've seen.

The plot's kind of weird.  In the past, Míla had a relationship with this composer, Živný.  Her mother makes her break it off to try to find a better match, but it turns out she's already pregnant, which kind of puts the kibosh on that.  Some years later, the two of them meet again and pick things up again, in spite of ma's disapproval.  Several years later, the two of them are married.  So that's nice, but in the meantime her mother has lost her mind.  The two of them have a scuffle on the balcony and they fall off and DIE.  Yikes.  And yet, that is only the climax of the second act (out of three).  The final act takes place eleven years later.  Some students are rehearsing Živný's unfinished opera, which is about his history with Míla.   Živný appears and lengthily monologues about the characters in his opera, who are clearly the two of them.  He collapses but recovers for the time being.  When the students wonder if he's going to finish the opera, he vehemently denies he will: it's in God's hands!

Is it?  Maybe so.  May. Be. So.  You might wonder, huh, if this is about a composer, is it to some extent autobiographical?  But I don't think so.  The story is that Janáček met a woman who had been in a similar situation to Míla--forced to leave her composer lover by her rich parents--and he wrote an unsympathetic opera about her, so she wanted Janáček to paint her more sympathetically (I love the idea of opera-as-diss-track).  Which...well, it's not unsympathetic, but you do have to wonder what her reaction would have been if she saw it, which she probably didn't, since it wasn't staged until long after Janáček's death, in 1958.

Well...it's definitely weird.  That booklet linked about characterizes the libretto as "sometimes verg[ing] on the incomprehensible," which...well, it's kind of fair.  Still, I liked it.  It's interesting, if nothing else, and as for the music, I feel like I might have the wrong idea about Janáček, as it's a lot more melodic than I remember his work being.  I should revisit Jenůfa.