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Destiny

Destiny (also known as Fate, Czech: Osud) is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by the composer and Fedora Bartošová. Janáček began the work in 1903 and completed it in 1907. The inspiration for the opera came from a visit by Janáček in the summer of 1903, after the death of his daughter Olga, to the spa at Luhačovice. There, Janáček met Kamila Urválková, who had been the subject of an opera by Ludvík Čelanský, Kamila, where she felt that Čelanský had falsely depicted her personality. After learning that Janáček was a composer, Urválková persuaded Janáček to write another opera to counteract Čelanský's portrait of her.

Janáček submitted the opera to the Brno Theatre in 1906, and to the Vinohrady Theatre in Prague in 1907, but both theatres rejected the score. The score stayed with the Vinohrady Theatre even after Janáček had threatened lawsuits against the theatre and after the Brno theatre made offers of a possible production.

The work did not receive a hearing until after Janáček's death, in 1934 on Brno Radio.

The first staging was in 1958 in Brno, conducted by František Jílek, as part of the 1958 Janáček Festival in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Janáček's death.

However, the structure of the plot was altered from the original to give the story a "flashback" format, where the story begins with Act 3 and interpolates Act 1 and Act 2 as the "flashbacks", before returning to finish Act 3.

The first UK staging was in 1984 at English National Opera, in a translation by David Poutney, but with Janáček's original plot structure intact. The first US production was in July 2003 at the Bard Summerscape Festival. Scholars have criticised weaknesses in the plot as the reason for the opera's neglect.

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