With their choirmaster joining the army, a choral group in the Yorkshire town of Ramsden decides to take a chance on appointing Dr Henry Guthrie as his replacement, despite Guthrie's homosexuality, Germanophilia and atheism. A brick is thrown through the audition room window with a note stating "Hun muck", referring to Guthrie and/or the choice of work (the St Matthew Passion by German composer Bach). Instead Guthrie proposes Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, which is accepted despite misgivings about the composer's Catholicism and the work's inclusion of purgatory. To supplement the diminishing number of male singers, Guthrie recruits male voices from the nearby military hospital.
Two of the singers start a relationship, as Bella's sweetheart Clyde is "missing believed dead". He arrives back in the town after having his arm amputated, but Bella feels committed to her new young man. Guthrie receives news of the sinking of the German battleship Pommern and Elgar's approval almost simultaneously - he is grief-stricken as his lover was a sailor on that battleship. Guthrie's gay pianist Robert tells him of his intention to register as a conscientious objector rather than be conscripted, but fails to convince his conscription board of this.
Duxbury reluctantly relinquishes the lead role to the talented Clyde. The group's limited resources lead them to make amendments to the work and to semi-stage it, with Gerontius as a wounded soldier and the Angel as a nurse. The performance is due to be on the evening of the day on which Elgar is to be invested as an honorary Doctor of Music at the University of Manchester and two of the group invite him to a rehearsal afterwards. Initially effusive, he becomes hostile and withdraws his permission for the performance when Duxbury accidentally mentions the revisions.
The group get round this obstacle by making the performance free and it is a great success. Soon afterwards three of the men from the choir are conscripted (though a fourth is refused due to his epilepsy). On the night before they leave one of the three visits the local sex worker Mrs Bishop to lose his virginity before going and another visits his girlfriend Mary, who refuses to have sex with him as this is the bargain she has made with God for him to come home safe. Robert is taken away to prison by the Military Police whilst the three board a train in uniform, their expressions becoming ambivalent once they have said goodbye to their sweethearts and families.
In March 2024, it was announced that Nicholas Hytner would be directing the film The Choral from a script by frequent collaborator Alan Bennett; unlike their previous projects which were based on stage plays written by Bennett, this is an original screenplay. Ralph Fiennes and Simon Russell Beale were announced to be starring. Sony Pictures Classics acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film and financed it, along with BBC Film and Screen Yorkshire. Hytner also serves as producer alongside Kevin Loader and Damian Jones.
The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 5 September 2025 in the Gala Presentations section,[14] and was theatrically released in the United Kingdom on 7 November 2025.[15]
Members of the Huddersfield Choral Society believe that the film is based on their choir's history, noting that they sang The Dream of Gerontius in 1916 and that Huddersfield's origins include the Ramsden Estate.[18]
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