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Janácek's Osud not only preceded Mr Broucek, Katya Kabanová and Makropoulos : Janácek began it even before the Brno première of Jenufa in January 1904, during the period of his obsession with one of his many muses, Kamila Urvalková (the more important Kamila Stösslová came later), and before Dvorák's death at the start of May 1904. Mirka Zemanová (in her recent book on Janácek) cannot be far wrong in seeing it as a direct response to verismo, its writing 'among the most lyrical, passionate and voluptuous Janácek ever wrote.'

Niki Turner's intelligent, economical set, costumes and properties ingeniously took up where Sárka left off -- recycling, like a kind of photographic negative, the sacred circular clearing or temenos that formed the clearing of Premysl's primeval princely court. Having caught the spaciousness of Sárka's score, Elgar Howarth drove Osud's music forward with energy, and to equal effect : Janácek's prominently-employed brass played for him like heroes, and the vivid chorus bettered even Sárka's noble finale.

Act I of Osud begins (as does Act III) with a party atmosphere -- all waltzes (pirouetting flutes and violins, pecking trombones and violas) and balloons, with support characters in tennis whites, and tenor Adrian Thompson's Zivný, a composer struggling in black, hovering like some gloomy presence from film noir. Director Olivia Fuchs's eye for detail was a joy (compare David Pountney's incisive Martinu Julietta, to be revived by Opera North in early 2003) : characters dotted around in constantly varying precise tableaux, fussing over binoculars, fans, parasols, the daily newspaper.

There are many singing roles in the beleaguered Zivný's entourage, professional types, each well defined : I liked Pencarreg's stomachy Lhotki, Olivia Keen's mezzo Mila, Dyfed Wyn-Evans's thin, bespectacled, ever-courteous Konecny, tenor Christopher Gillett's admirably sung Dr Suda, and Jane Leslie MacKenzie's schoolmarm (the comically named Miss Stuhla) nursing a clutch of tennis-playing girls and athletically stretching youths, all as perky as the children from Dvorák's Jacobin. A massive energy was built up here, and much jollity, which is just what this dark but jovial piece -- more Strauss than Strauss, and embracing some of the most rapturous music Janácek ever composed -- requires.

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