Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov had thought increasingly about the…

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov had thought increasingly about the short story May Night by Nikolai Gogol in the summer of 1877.

The story had long been a favorite of his, and his wife Nadezhda had encouraged him to write an opera based on it from the day of their betrothal, when they had read it together.

While musical ideas for such a work predated 1877, now they came with greater persistence.

By winter, May Night had taken an increasing amount of his attention; in February 1878 he had started writing in earnest, and he finishes the opera by early November.

Rimsky-Korsakov writes that May Night is of great importance because, despite the opera's containing a good deal of contrapuntal music, he nevertheless "cast off the shackles of counterpoint". (Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai, Letoppis Moyey Muzykalnoy Zhizni (St. Petersburg, 1909), published in English as My Musical Life (New York: Knopf, 1925, 3rd ed. 1942).

He writes the opera in a folk-like melodic idiom, and scores it in a transparent manner much in the style of Mikhail Glinka.

Nevertheless, despite the ease of writing this opera and the next, The Snow Maiden, from time to time he will suffer from creative paralysis between 1881 and 1888.

He will keep busy by editing Mussorgsky's works and completing Borodin's Prince Igor (Mussorgsky will die in 1881, Borodin in 1887).