Ulumbarra Theatres is about to be launched into the international spotlight next year with the staging of a $5 million production of composer Richard Wagner's monumental Ring cycle in Bendigo.

The Ring cycle comprises four operas over a duration of 19 hours and is usually performed over a week-long festival at the Bayreuth Opera House in Germany.

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However, there is a 14-year waiting list from booking a ticket to actually seeing the Ring cycle performance which is why fans - colloquially known as 'Ringnuts' - desperately travel the world to see the lavish production wherever it is playing.

And next year, that venue is Bendigo.

"We're pretty excited, it's just amazing," Bendigo Venues and Events manager Julie Amos said.

"The Ring cycle truly is a tourism Mecca - build it and they will come. We are expecting international tourists with this."

While individual operas from the Ring cycle have been performed in Australia before, it is rare for all four operas to be staged at any one time such is the enormity of the production and the strain on the orchestra.

The first Australian performance of the Ring cycle was in 1913 and that was by a visiting English opera company.

It wasn't attempted again until 1998 in Adelaide (with a production largely borrowed from Paris) before the first Australian production took place in 2004 in the South Australian capital.

Performances in Melbourne followed in 2013 and 2016. Next year's Bendigo performance is only the sixth staging of the complete Ring cycle in Australia and the first in a regional city.

The Ring cycle is based on Norse mythology and contains everything from knights and dragons to gods and creatures called valkyries swooping across the stage.

Ms Amos said anyone familiar with The Lord of the Rings movies and books would be comfortable with the Ring cycle narrative.

"The Ring cycle is about finding a golden ring in a river which really fits in well with Bendigo," she said.

The first opera of the cycle lasts three hours without an interval, the middle two operas are four hours apiece in duration and the final opera is six hours.

"It's a large undertaking," Ms Amos said.

"It's so big the orchestra can't perform two nights in a row because of the repetitive strain on their fingers and muscles."

Next year's production will be the work of Melbourne Opera, which has held concerts at Ulumbarra in the past, including abbreviated performances of Wagner's works.

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About 250 performers and technicians will be in Bendigo to stage the Ring cycle - not once, but three times.

"It will be three complete cycles of the Ring," Ms Amos said.

"it's such a huge undertaking we thought it would be crazy not to do it more than once. Otherwise only 900 people would get to see it," she added, referring to Ulumbarra's capacity.

The plan is to stage the first two operas on a Friday and Sunday and the other two on the following Friday and Sunday, meaning it will take 10 days to complete one Ring cycle.

The first performance is scheduled to start March 24 next year and is expected to run until late April.

As a taste of of what's to come, Melbourne Opera will perform the second opera of the Ring cycle - Die Walkure (The Valkyrie) - at Ulumbarra in the next fortnight on Sunday, February 27.

"It's the most famous opera of the Ring Cycle and contains 'The Ride of the Valkyries' which is the most famous Wagner piece of music ever," Ms Amos said.

The Ring cycle will follow on from the Bendigo Art Gallery's Elvis Presley exhibition which opens next month, with both events helping to put Bendigo in the international spotlight.

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