60th Parallel

"The vocal writing is reminiscent of Berg or Strauss. The orchestra depicts the many climaxes of the storm. This is extraordinary writing showing the composer has command of a wide range of colours and expression. Recorded live at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, this is featured as part of a Naxos cycle entitled 21st Century Classics. 60th Parallel is thought provoking. It is an intellectual masterpiece that will set the standard for opera in the 21st century."

- Kevin Mallon, Scena Musicale, November 2002

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"PHILIPPE MANOURY's thriller-opera, recorded live in 1997, is set in a remote airport lounge during a fierce winter storm. (Odd that it should have been composed so near in time to Jonathan Dove's Flight.) The passengers are a curious collection. One, whom we never hear, is murdered by a fugitive war criminal, Wim Kosowitch, but has been noticed by the latter's pursuer, Rudy Link. Their fellow travelers include an academic in possession of Einstein's brain and a lovelorn woman. Manoury's music, which includes sporadic but effective electronic matter and elements of parody (heavy metal, Ravel's La Valse), is modernist-expressionist. Fine performances, especially from Donald Maxwell as Link and Jean-Pilippe Courtis as Kosowitch."

- The Sunday Times (Stephen Pettit) October 22, 2000

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"This comes on Naxos's 21st Century Classics label, and the opera may well endure as a classic of its kind: 60th Parallel is certainly one of the more significant operas of recent years. Its composer, Philippe Manoury, is a leading light of French music today. At the 1997 Châtelet premiere, he shared equal billing with the librettist Michel Deutsch and Producer Pierre Strosser, and the scenario is a collaborative one. It explores the feelings of passengers trapped by a storm in an airport on the 60th parallel, their destinies on hold as they wait for a hypothetical departure.

"It may sound like Jonathan Dove's 1998 Flight at Glyndebourne, but Manoury's music is less obviously tuneful and more atmospheric. He mixes electronics with the conventional instruments of the Orchestre de Paris (committed under David Robertson's baton) to create a compact score full of flux. Jean-Philippe Courtis is suitably grim as the war criminal who murders his pursuer (a focused Donald Maxwell)."

- The Times (John Allison) November 28, 2000

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"Philipppe Manoury's 60th Parallel, about a group of passengers stranded in an airport on the 60th parallel by a storm, is a tightly woven piece with a bleak denouement and a score that melds electronical sounds and the live orchestra in his characteristically adept way. The main musical interest lies in these layered sonorities, for much of the text is declaimed rather than sung, and the effect is of a series of dislocated confrontations, played out against the background of the raging storm outside, which in many ways is the main protagonist of the work."

- BBC Music Magazine (Andrew Clements), February, 2001