"Well, I'm slightly relieved, he says with a laugh. The part in Gerontius that his character attempts to sing is the tenor solo, which is endless and terribly difficult and very high. And I as you hear have a baritone voice, quite a low one as well. And I haven't sung for about 15 years. And so I was rather glad that it had to be bad!"
"The Alan Bennett-scripted film, directed by Nicholas Hytner, is set in 1916 in a Yorkshire factory town on the cusp of huge societal change, hollowed out by grief as its young men die in foreign fields. The choral society is at the heart of this community, but even there it's far from business as usual: Bach's St Matthew Passion is verboten (German music). There's a new chorus master."
Roger Allam plays a gentle mill owner who funds a choral society in a 1916 Yorkshire factory town coping with wartime grief. The choral society confronts bans on German music and an urgent need for new singers under a new chorus master. Allam's character attempts the demanding tenor solo from Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius but sings poorly because Allam has a baritone voice and had not sung for about fifteen years. The film, scripted by Alan Bennett and directed by Nicholas Hytner, emphasizes period detail, community loss, wit, and subtle wisdom.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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