Gogolian "nights" by N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov

The article analyses the opera librettos Nikolai. Rimsky-Korsakov's "May Night" and "The Night Before Christmas", based on the narratives by Nikolai Gogol from the "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka". Changes that made by the composer (he was also a librettist in this case) in the structure and content of the verbal text, allow to detect as a fundamental differences, as those constant features that the author found necessary to retain in the transfer of prose text on the operatic stage