The composer termed the cycle a "Bühnenfestspiel" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a Vorabend ("preliminary evening").

[4] A full performance of the cycle takes place over four nights at the opera, with a total playing time of about 15 hours, depending on the conductor's pacing.

It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the eponymous magic ring that grants domination over the entire world.

For example, George Bernard Shaw, in The Perfect Wagnerite, argues for a view of The Ring as an essentially socialist critique of industrial society and its abuses.

Robert Donington in Wagner's Ring And Its Symbols interprets it in terms of Jungian psychology, as an account of the development of unconscious archetypes in the mind, leading towards individuation.

[10] Wagner unfortunately found that his audiences were not willing to follow where he led them: The public, by their enthusiastic reception of Rienzi and their cooler welcome of the Flying Dutchman, had plainly shown me what I must set before them if I sought to please.

The Wagner scholar Curt von Westernhagen identified three important problems discussed in "Opera and Drama" which were particularly relevant to the Ring cycle: the problem of unifying verse stress with melody; the disjunctions caused by formal arias in dramatic structure and the way in which opera music could be organised on a different basis of organic growth and modulation; and the function of musical motifs in linking elements of the plot whose connections might otherwise be inexplicit.

As George Bernard Shaw sardonically (and slightly unfairly)[14] noted of the last opera Götterdämmerung: And now, O Nibelungen Spectator, pluck up; for all allegories come to an end somewhere...

Before many bars have been played, Siegfried and the wakened Brynhild, newly become tenor and soprano, will sing a concerted cadenza; plunge on from that to a magnificent love duet...The work which follows, entitled Night Falls on the Gods [Shaw's translation of Götterdämmerung], is a thorough grand opera.

Wagner referred to them in "Opera and Drama" as "guides-to-feeling", describing how they could be used to inform the listener of a musical or dramatic subtext to the action onstage in the same way as a Greek chorus did for the theatre of ancient Greece.

Chromatically altered chords are used very liberally in the Ring and this feature, which is also prominent in Tristan und Isolde, is often cited as a milestone on the way to Arnold Schoenberg's revolutionary break with the traditional concept of key and his dissolution of consonance as the basis of an organising principle in music.

In summer 1848 Wagner wrote The Nibelung Myth as Sketch for a Drama, combining the medieval sources previously mentioned into a single narrative, very similar to the plot of the eventual Ring cycle, but nevertheless with substantial differences.

Wagner then laid the work aside for twelve years, during which he wrote Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

In the completed work the gods are destroyed in accordance with the new pessimistic thrust of the cycle, not redeemed as in the more optimistic originally planned ending.

On King Ludwig's insistence, and over Wagner's objections, "special previews" of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre were given at the National Theatre in Munich, before the rest of the Ring.

Wagner would spend the next two years attempting to raise capital for the construction, with scant success; King Ludwig finally rescued the project in 1874 by donating the needed funds.

In 1882, London impresario Alfred Schulz-Curtius organized the first staging in the United Kingdom of the Ring cycle, conducted by Anton Seidl and directed by Angelo Neumann.

[19] The first Australian Ring (and The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) was presented in an English-language production by the British travelling Quinlan Opera Company, in conjunction with J. C. Williamson's, in Melbourne and Sydney in 1913.

This drew heavily on the reading of the Ring as a revolutionary drama and critique of the modern world, famously expounded by George Bernard Shaw in The Perfect Wagnerite.

[23][24] Seattle Opera has created three different productions of the tetralogy: Ring 1, 1975 to 1984: Originally directed by George London, with designs by John Naccarato following the famous illustrations by Arthur Rackham.

[25] In 2003 the first production of the cycle in Russia in modern times was conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Mariinsky Opera, Saint Petersburg, designed by George Tsypin.

The 2011/12 season introduced Siegfried and Götterdämmerung with Voigt, Terfel and Jay Hunter Morris before the entire cycle was given in the Spring of 2012 conducted by Fabio Luisi (who stepped in for Levine due to health issues).

Lepage's "Machine", as it affectionately became known, underwent major reconfiguration for the revival in order to dampen the creaking that it had produced in the past (to the annoyance of audience members and critics) and to improve its reliability, as it had been known to break down during earlier runs including on the opening night of Rheingold.

The mid-1990s production by August Everding with choreography by Cirque du Soleil's Debra Brown was conducted by Zubin Mehta, with James Morris a Wotan and Eva Marton as Brünnhilde, Siegfried Jerusalem as Siegmund, and Tina Kiberg as Sieglinde.

[40] The 2000s Ring cast included "James Morris as Wotan, Jane Eaglen as Brünnhilde, Plácido Domingo as Siegmund, and Michelle DeYoung as Sieglinde."

"[41] The most recent production's Das Rheingold premiered in 2016, with subsequent Ring operas Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung staged between 2017 and 2019.

The production starred "Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde, Burkhard Fritz as Siegfried, Eric Owens as Wotan and the Wanderer, Samuel Youn as Alberich, Tanja Ariane Baumgartner as Fricka and Waltraute, Elisabet Strid ... and Laura Wilde ... as Sieglinde, Brandon Jovanovich as Froh/Siegmund, Stephen Milling as Hunding/Hagen, Ronnita Miller as Erda/First Norn, Stefan Margita ... and Robert Brubaker ... as Loge, Matthias Klink as Mime, Soloman Howard as Fafner, Henning von Schulman as Fasolt.

"[45] The production was presented again in Melbourne from 21 November to 16 December 2016 starring Lise Lindstrom, Stefan Vinke, Amber Wagner and Jacqueline Dark.

[48] A heavily cut-down version (7 hours plus intervals) was performed at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires on 26 November 2012 to mark the 200th anniversary of Wagner's birth.

[53][54] Produced by the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Charles Ludlam's 1977 play Der Ring Gott Farblonjet was a spoof of Wagner's operas.