(Credit: Richard Lewisohn)

Grange Park Opera is set to perform “A Feast in the Time of Plague,” a brand new opera commissioned during the lockdown.

The work, which is composed by Alex Woolf and features a libretto by David Pountney, will be presented on Sunday, Sept. 12 and 13, 2020 in front of an audience of 250 people at the Theatre in the Woods. Pountney completed the libretto in early June while Woolf completed his score in six weeks.

The work will star Sir Simon Keenlyside, Wynne Evan, and Susan Bullock, among others.

“We’ve decided to take a leap to perform this live in front of an audience. This new opera has 12 performers around a very, very long table – groaning with luscious delicacies. We are taking the utmost precautions,” said Wasfi Kani, the founder and CEO of Grange park Opera in a press release. “The five levels of the Theatre in the Woods normally seats more than 700 people. It means that the 250 audience members will each have a volume of air of 31 cubic metres – considerably more than a half-full plane to Greece upon which 100 passengers have a mere 2.34 cubic metres. In my view it’s time we all got moving again, and I don’t mean flying to Greece.”

The team at Grange Park Opera will be taking several precautions to avoid potential spread of COVID-19. All performers and crew members will be tested for antibodies. Medical Detection Dogs is set to provide dogs to help detect any trace of the virus. Meanwhile, audience members will be seated in household groups and in private boxes throughout the hall.