Tolkien knew the mythology on which Wagner's Ring was based far better than Wagner did - he was one of the world's foremost experts on it and a professor of philology at Oxford - so it is just silly to think he would have based The Lord of the Rings on a late operatic source like Wagner, or that Wagner would have had anything to offer that he didn't already know from other sources. While at Oxford, Tolkien argued that the work of Shakespeare should be de-emphasized in the curriculum in favor of the writing of Snorri Sturluson - and he won the argument! Who is Snorri Sturluson you ask? He, unlike Wagner, is one of Tolkien's actual sources, which anyone might easily have learned had they cared to know something about Tolkien before insulting him by suggesting dependence on a literary lightweight like Wagner.
