Lab.Oratorium is Philippe Manoury's response to the drowning of countless refugees in the Mediterranean: a work for two actors, soprano, mezzo-soprano, chamber choir, large choir, live electronics and orchestra, with more than 250 performers. It combines theatre, oratorio, live electronics and spatial composition, and this is its first recording.

Manoury, one of the most prominent composers in France today, wrote the piece together with director Nicolas Stemann for Cologne's Gürzenich Orchestra, which commissioned it with the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, IRCAM and the Philharmonie de Paris. François-Xavier Roth conducts, with Hossein Pishkar as co-conductor. The singers are soprano Rinnat Moriah and mezzo-soprano Tora Augestad, the actors Patrycia Ziolkowska and Sebastian Rudolph, and the choirs are the SWR Vokalensemble (chorus master Léo Warynski) and the Lab.Chor (Michael Ostrzyga). The electronics were realised by IRCAM's computer music production, Thomas Goepfer and Julien Aléonard, and Patrick Hahn was dramaturg.

The idea of a modern Odyssey runs through the nine sections, from Vorspiel and Ausfahrt und Reise (Departure and Journey) to Mare Nostrum and a final Abfahrt. Sabine Grenard of SOS Méditerranée collected eyewitness accounts from members of maritime rescue teams, and these conversations are built into the work, so that spoken testimony sits beside sung and orchestral music. The piece was also inspired by the architecture of new concert halls, the Elbphilharmonie with its evocation of ships and the sea among them, and the sound is distributed through the space. The expressive force never turns sentimental.

Lab.Oratorium was conceived as an independent work, but it also concludes a trilogy of large spatial works for orchestra that includes Manoury's prize-winning In Situ and Ring. It was first performed on 19 May 2019 at the Philharmonie in Cologne by the Gürzenich Orchestra under Roth, and the French premiere followed at the Philharmonie de Paris on 3 June 2019. The piece was also given at the Elbphilharmonie as part of the Hamburg International Music Festival.

CD, Wergo WER 7396 2, released in 2021, first recording, total time 78'44". With the support of MFA, Musique Française d'Aujourd'hui.