The article deals with a concept of plot and psychological aspects of time in a play by Lev Mei “The Tsar's Bride” and an opera of the same name by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The changes made by the composer and librettist Ilya Tyumenev in the literary text are analyzed. While in the drama the emphasis is on the present time - linear and unidirectional, in the opera especially in the key scenes - time is retrospective. The world of memories is perfect, the present is a deadly threat to the heroes of the opera, and there is no future for them. Such an interpretation of time allows the composer, while fully preserving the plot of the drama, to create his own original drama in the opera.