Das Rheingold, the first of four operas in Der Ring des Nibelungen by the German composer Richard Wagner (pictured), was first performed in Munich.

Das Rheingold, WWV 86A, is the first of the four epic music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. It premiered as a single opera at the National Theatre of Munich on 22 September 1869, and received its first performance as part of the Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 13 August 1876.

Der Ring des Nibelungen, WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the Nibelungenlied. The composer termed the cycle a "Bühnenfestspiel", structured in three days preceded by a Vorabend. It is often referred to as the Ring cycle, Wagner's Ring, or simply The Ring.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor, best known for his operas—or music dramas, as his mature works came to be called. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. He first gained recognition with works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, whereby he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. The drama was to be presented as a continuously sung narrative, without conventional operatic structures like arias and recitatives. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the 16-hour, four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.