US EditionIn ‘The Choral,’ Ralph Fiennes and a War-Weary English Town Seek Peace in Music
Ralph Fiennes stars as a chorus master who adapts Elgar’s oratorio for a reduced choir to uplift a WWI English town amid conscription and loss, highlighting music's role in community resilience.
- Ralph Fiennes stars as Dr. Henry Guthrie, hired to lead Ramsden's amateur choir during World War I as they attempt Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius.
- With conscription hollowing out the town, many young men of Ramsden were conscripted, leaving the choral society depleted and local townspeople forcing them to drop Johann Sebastian Bach's work soon.
- Guthrie adapts Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius for a string trio, choir and three soloists and recruits women and men too young or too old to fight from local pubs, hospitals and bakeries in Ramsden.
- The film depicts communal singing as a unifying force, with Hytner noting `The First World War, because the scale of the slaughter was so extreme and in the end the sense of waste was so extreme, it kind of serves as a template for everything I think that artists have wanted to say since about what war does to us,' Hytner said.
- The film also marks the fourth collaboration between Nicholas Hytner and Alan Bennett, their first project originally for film, with Taylor Haney producing the broadcast version.
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In ‘The Choral,’ Ralph Fiennes and a war-weary English town seek peace in music
In “The Choral,” Ralph Fiennes plays Dr. Henry Guthrie, a talented and demanding musician hired by a small Yorkshire town’s amateur choral society when they lose their chorusmaster to World War I. Director Nicholas Hytner and writer Alan Bennett team up for the fourth time on the film, which is set in 1916. Most of the young men in town have been claimed by the war as fighters and the dead. The choral group is in rough shape, a few older men sca…
For a film about war, loss and sexuality, The Choral’ feels remarkably bland
“The Choral,” directed by out gay filmmaker Nicholas Hytner and written by the out gay Alan Bennett, is a genteel period drama about making rousing music, but alas, it rouses little more than a yawn. In 1916 Ramden, Yorkshire, Alderman Duxbury (Roger Allam), the local mill owner, is planning to stage a performance of “St. Matthew Passion.” He hopes to entice the few men left in the town to sing as they need male voices. After the auditions, howe…
A prickly Ralph Fiennes uplifts a town through music during WWI in 'The Choral'
A northern English town loses its best choral singers to fighting in World War I but finds new hope in a time of loss through music in Nicholas Hytner's new film "The Choral," featuring Ralph Fiennes.
Win a double in-season pass to see Ralph Fiennes in The Choral
Thanks to Sony Pictures Australia, we have 5 double in-season passes (Admit 2) to see Ralph Fiennes in the The Choral, in Australian theatres from New Years Day, January 1st, 2026. 1916. As war rages on the Western Front, the Choral Society in Ramsden, Yorkshire has lost most of its men to the army. The...
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