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Stagings of Richard Wagner’s cycle of four interlinked operas, together known as “The Ring of the Nibelung,” are what put Seattle Opera on the international map almost half a century ago.

But when the Bayreuth Festival Theater opened in 1876, with the premiere of his full “Ring of the Nibelung” — a four-opera, 15-hour mythic tale about nature and power with a cast of gods, warriors, dwarves, giants, talking birds and spitting dragons — Wagner was still unsatisfied.

On Feb. 27, during the final performance at Teatro Real of Twilight of the Gods – the last opera in Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung series – artists on stage wrapped the corpse of the protagonist, Siegried, in the Ukrainian flag.

For opera lovers, familiarity with Norse mythology eases a gateway into Richard Wagner’s four-piece cycle “Ring of the Nibelung.”

Richard Wagner’s music, particularly that for his epic, doom-suffused opera, “The Ring of the Nibelung,” could easily supply our brutalist era with its big-screen soundtrack, starting with the exhilarating “Ride of the Valkyries” and closing with the orchestral Sturm und Drang of its over-the-top finale, in which celestial Valhalla goes up in flames, the Rhine River overflows its banks and the age of gods and heroes reaches its apocalyptic end.