The Moderate Soprano

I want to give my country a model of perfection... Nothing less. My country needs cheering up. I'm the man to do it.

Nobody can doubt John Christie's passion or his formidable will: his wooing of his opera singer wife has been marked by a determination befitting a man who won the Military Cross at the Battle of Loos. Now, in 1934, this Etonian science teacher's admiration for the works of Wagner has led him to embark on an ambitious project: the construction of an Opera House on his estate in Sussex.

But such is the scale of the enterprise that passion may not be enough. It's only when fog descends on Eastbourne, stranding a famous violinist overnight, that Christie hears word of a group of refugees for whom life in Germany is becoming impossible. Perhaps they can deliver Christie's vision of the sublime - assuming they're willing to cast his wife in the lead.

David Hare's The Moderate Soprano premiered at Hampstead Theatre, London, in October 2015.