Completed in 1906, Osud is a marvellous but little known opera in 3 acts.The emotionally detailed libretto is based on a true story told to Janacek in August of 1903 at the Moravian spa of Luhacovice, where he was recovering from his daughter's recent death. His acquaintance, a young woman named Kamila Urválková, spoke of her love affair with a composer who she was not to marry because of her family's objections. This fellow, Ludvik Celansky, even wrote an opera entitled "Kamila" about their relationship which was staged in 1897. Janacek changed Kamila's name into Mila (incidentally, Janacek later married another woman named Kamila) and the real life Celansky became the character of the composer Zivny in "Osud".

The story begins with the realism of Act I; the lovers are unexpectedly reunited at the same Luhacovice spa. Mila has a son, Doubek, by Zivny, and they decide to live together despite the objections of Mila's mother. This first act is melodious and rich in orchestral timbres, notably the waltz-like opening with its Czech folk references and modalities. The lovers' meeting, dialogues and arias in Janacek's "natural speech" patterns are sensitively underscored with variations that depict the rise and fall of emotion, the movement from intimate moments to music of wider dimensions, the fleeting use of unusual vocal patterns (scales reaching to the end of the vocal range, etc.) and touches of "location music" that suggest film-cutting technique. The spirited song "Ty zlaté nase slunicko (Our little golden sun on high)" sung by the young girl students and guests, remarkably pre-dates Bartókian settings with its aggressive style and intervals, as the opening music similarly pre-dates Carl Nielsen's musical landscapes. Act II takes place 4 years later; the mother has gone mad, composer Zivny has been unable to complete his opera. Mila sees the melodies as "witnesses of my shame", and Zivny tears page after page in anger. With other tensions arising in the household at the conclusion of this act, Mila, attempting to save her mother from falling down the staircase, is dragged along and perishes with her. The action makes for some miraculous musical moments. For example, when the song about "Fatum" in Zivny's opera is transferred from piano and harp accompaniment to larger orchestra, it envelopes and expands the emotion of the scene; or when Zivny's highly charged aria is suddenly stopped in dead silence before the cadential chord, or when a suspended chord accompanies the little child Doubek who runs into the room to ask if his mother knows what love is. The opera has begun to move away from the realism of Act I into dreamlike imagination. In Act III, a masterpiece of the intricate interweaving of emotions and musical imagery, students in The Great Hall of the Conservatory are rehearsing the score of Zivny's opera. They do not understand the piece and its textual symbols. The opera seems unfinished, ending with the words "Blue flashes and with a burning flame lash high into the heavens, they die out and cool down in the wet, wide earth". They lapse into parody until Zivny himself appears and begins to explain it to them, inadvertedly identifying himself with the opera's hero Lensky, whose life contains the same tragedies as that of Zivny. The child Doubek, now a student at the Conservatory, calls out his mother's name in response to Zivny's description. At that very moment, lightning strikes the composer dead and the work remains unfinished. The opera has moved from realism to the dream of fateful inevitability.

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