The Royal Choral Society will return to the Royal Albert Hall this weekend for its annual performance of Handel’s Messiah—which was delayed from Good Friday due to the pandemic. The performance will be one of the first to take place at the venue, in Kensington, London, as COVID-19 restrictions continue to ease in England under Boris Johnson’s roadmap out of lockdown. The Royal Albert Hall (RAH), one of London’s most iconic venues, will reopen on May 29 with a series of socially distanced events before returning to a full house from July 6. Under social distancing rules, the RAH will only release 1,000 tickets for each of the concerts in its programme ahead of July—around 20 percent of its pre-pandemic capacity. The RSC has performed Handel’s Messiah—composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel—at the Royal Albert Hall almost every Good Friday for nearly 150 years. The only exceptions to this …