(Credit: De Nationale Opera official website)

The Royal Concertgebouw has announced the cancellation of all concerts that were set to begin after 5. p.m. until Dec. 18, 2021.

For the remaining concerts, the Royal Concertgebouw has been limited to maximum of 425 spectators in the Main Hall, which is a quarter of the seating capacity. The orchestra noted that it could be forced to cancel more concerts under the new strict COVID-19 rules.

At the same time, De Nationale Opera rescheduled the final performance of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” on Nov. 28, 2021 for 1 p.m. CET. The opera house has disabled ticket purchases for performances of Verdi’s “La Traviata” between Dec. 4 – 17. The performances on Dec. 20, 23 & 26, 2021 with Mané Galoyan, Bogdan Volkov and George Petean are still on the repertoire.

The announcements come on the heels of a Dutch government’s decision to announce a hard lockdown between 5. p.m. and 5. a.m. CET for the period of three weeks starting Nov. 28, 2021.

Netherlands logged new 22,258 COVID-19 cases on Nov. 27, 2021. Dutch airliner KLM has announced that 61 passengers coming to Amsterdam from South Africa have tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival, and the health authorities are still conducting tests in order to see how many cases of the new SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant is among the positive samples. The initial tally shows 13 detected cases of Omicron.