David Kanaga, Wagner’s ‘Melusina’ Sketch of 1866: Text and Context

November 2026, Volume 20, Number 3, 4–27.

Melusina is the name of a water fairy who is known for a secret: every Saturday, while bathing, she transforms into a serpent from the waist down. When her name is mentioned alongside that of Richard Wagner, the two are usually mediated by a third – Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Mendelssohn’s op. 32 concert overture Das Märchen von der schönen Melusine of 1834 opens with a theme that strikingly anticipates the Rhine motif at the beginning of the Prelude to Das Rheingold. The closeness of this melodic resemblance stands in stark contrast to Wagner’s habitual anti-Semitic denigration of Mendelssohn and his music. This resemblance has been a source of intermittent curiosity for over a century and a half, and variously attributed to conscious theft, unconscious borrowing, or unintentional coincidence. The question remains unanswered to this day: is the very first musical motif of Wagner’s Ring cycle actually indebted to Mendelssohn’s Melusine overture?