Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky
In 1920, Prokudin-Gorsky remarried and had a daughter with his assistant Maria Fedorovna née Schedrimo. The family finally settled in Paris in 1922, reuniting with his first wife and children. Prokudin-Gorsky set up a photo studio there together with his three adult children, naming it after his fourth child, Elka. In the 1930s, the elderly Prokudin-Gorsky continued with lectures showing his photographs of Russia to young Russians in France, but stopped commercial work and left the studio to his children, who named it Gorsky Frères. He died in Paris on September 27, 1944, a month after the Liberation of Paris. He is buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that "May Night" was of great importance because, despite the opera's containing a good deal of contrapuntal music, he nevertheless ""cast off the shackles of counterpoint" [emphasis Rimsky-Korsakov]". He wrote the opera in a folk-like melodic idiom, and scored it in a transparent manner much in the style of Glinka. Nevertheless, despite the ease of writing this opera and the next, "The Snow Maiden", from time to time he suffered from creative paralysis between 1881 and 1888. He kept busy during this time by editing Mussorgsky's works and completing Borodin's "Prince Igor" (Mussorgsky died in 1881, Borodin in 1887).