Richard Wagner’s Norse-inspired Ring Cycle consists of four operas. The complete cycle is titled Der Ring des Nibelungen, or The Ring of the Nibelung, and tells an interconnected saga involving gods, giants, dwarfs, heroes, magical objects, and the Rhine gold.
The four operas are Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. Das Rheingold is a preliminary evening, while the other three works form the main dramatic trilogy. Wagner based the story on several medieval Germanic and Scandinavian sources, including the Völsunga saga and the Poetic Edda, while reshaping the material into his own mythic world.
A common mix-up is counting Das Rheingold as a prelude rather than an opera. It is both a preliminary work in the cycle’s dramatic structure and one of the cycle’s four operas. The four works are normally performed across four evenings, making the Ring one of the largest projects in the operatic repertory.