In general Enescu's opera follows the tragedy Oedipus Tyrannus (King Oedipus) by Sophocles, with a final act derived from Oedipus at Colonus. A major work of the Romanian composer, it has found no firm place in operatic repertoire.

The first act, a prologue, deals with the birth of Oedipus, the joy of his parents, Jocasta and Laius, and the foreboding of the prophet Tiresias, who foretells that the child will kill his father and marry his mother. The boy is given to a shepherd to take away and kill. Kept alive and brought up as the son of the King and Queen of Corinth, Oedipus is told by the oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Assured that he is their son, he leaves Corinth, killing Laius on his way and solving the riddle proposed by the Sphinx, which has preyed on the people of Thebes. He is rewarded by the hand of the widowed Queen, his mother Jocasta.

In the third act Thebes is suffering from a plague, caused by the presence in the city of a polluting figure, identified by Tiresias as Oedipus himself. The King blinds himself, after Jocasta has killed herself. He now goes away into perpetual exile, led by his daughter Antigone. The fourth act takes Oedipus to Athens, where he appears finally as triumphant over Fate, justifying his answer to the riddle of the Sphinx, 'What is greater than Fate?', to which he had replied 'Man'. An alteration of the traditional story.