The first trailer for Quartet has gone online.  The film is Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut, and stars Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins, Tom Courtenay, and Michael Gambon as opera singers at a retirement home.  Smith plays a new resident who decides not to participate in the year's annual concert.   "This is not a retirement home," Maggie Smith's character proclaims.  "This is a madhouse."  Indeed, the movie looks incredibly slight, and yet perfectly geared to the audiences that have helped The Exotic Marigold Hotel to $121 million worldwide.  In a nutshell: your parents will probably want to see it.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  Quartet opens in U.K. on January 4, 2013; there's currently no U.S. release date.

Trailer via The Playlist.

Here's the official synopsis for Quartet:

Lifelong friends Wilf and Reggie, together with former colleague Cissy, are residents of Beecham House, a home for retired opera singers. Every year on Giuseppe Verdi's birthday, the residents unite to give a concert to raise funds for their home. But when Jean Horton, a former grande dame of the opera fallen on hard times, also Reggie's ex-wife and the fourth and most celebrated member of their former quartet, moves into the home to everyone's surprise, the plans for this year's concert start to unravel.

As old grudges threaten to undermine past glories and theatrical temperaments play havoc with the rehearsal schedule, it becomes apparent that having four of the finest singers in English operatic history under one roof offers no guarantee that the show will go on.