Felix Mendelssohn Melusine (Die schöne Melusine)" (1830). A contemporary writer considered these works as "perhaps the most beautiful overtures that, so far, we Germans possess". Mendelssohn also wrote in 1839 an overture to "Ruy Blas", commissioned for a charity performance of Victor Hugo's drama (which the composer hated) His incidental music to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (Op. 61), including the well-known Wedding March, was written in 1843, seventeen years after the Overture. The Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 (1844), was written for Ferdinand David. David, who had worked closely with Mendelssohn during the piece's preparation, gave the premiere of the
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mendelssohn) This was followed by incidental music for Sophocles' "Oedipus" (Potsdam, 1 November 1845; published posthumously as Op. 93) and Jean Racine's "Athalie" (Berlin, 1 December 1845; Op. 74). The "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Overture, Op. 21, originally written as an independent piece 16 years earlier, was incorporated into the Op. 61 incidental music as its overture, and the first of its 14 numbers. There are also vocal sections and other purely instrumental movements, including the Scherzo, Nocturne and "Wedding March". The vocal numbers include the song "Ye spotted snakes" and the melodramas "Over hill, over dale", "The Spells", "What hempen