My Lai

My Lai: A Monodrama for tenor, string quartet, and Vietnamese instruments

Smithsonian Folkways has released a recording of My Lai (May 20, 2022), available for digital streaming, and in CD and vinyl. Please see below for more information about this recording.

Composed by Jonathan Berger
Libretto by Harriet Scott Chessman
Performed by Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, & Vân-Ánh Võ

Direction and set design by Mark DeChiazza and Rinde Eckert
Video design by Mark DeChiazza
Lighting design by Brian H. Scott

I wrote the libretto for this operatic piece, composed by Jonathan Berger. My Lai is about Hugh Thompson, the Army helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War who courageously intervened in the U.S. Army massacre of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968, only to be haunted for the rest of his life by that morning, and by his own government’s efforts to undermine his testimony.

“Fifty Years After the My Lai Massacre, An Opera Confronts the Past” — NPR Weekend Edition, Neda Ulaby

“My Lai”: BBC Interview with David Harrington (The Kronos Quartet) and Harriet Scott Chessman, by Robin Warren for the BBC

“My Lai Revisited: One Man’s Journey,” by Jacki Apple for FABRIK. “Chessman’s libretto is a brilliant montage of moments, snapshot flashes of images, bursts of emotions, slivers of repeating memories that ebb and flow in Thompson’s inner monolog as he confronts his own impending death.”

“The half-spoken, half-sung vocal writing moved in sometimes jagged, expressionistic intervals, the character’s recollections peppered with obscenities common to GI-speak, especially in the heat of battle. Chessman’s memory play mixes poetry, slang and hurt with fierce brilliance.”
—Chicago Tribune

For a glimpse of this collaboration, early on, click here.

Commissioned by Harris Theater for Music and Dance with support from the Laura and Ricardo Rosenkranz Artistic Innovation Fund and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Gerbode-Hewlett Foundations 2013 Music Commissioning Awards initiative, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Information about the Smithsonian Folkways recording:

On March 16, 1968, the United States Army killed over 500 unarmed civilians in the hamlet of Mỹ Lai, Vietnam. The unimaginable brutality of the event impacted all those who witnessed it firsthand, including helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who, against orders, intervened to save Vietnamese lives. Thompson’s story is the basis of the opera Mỹ Lai, composed by Jonathan Berger (music) and Harriet Scott Chessman (libretto) for Kronos Quartet, Vietnamese multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, and vocalist Rinde Eckert. This definitive recording of Mỹ Lai captures the visceral, phantasmal depictions of Thompson’s grief, horror, and guilt as he is haunted by persistent memories of that cataclysmic day, half a world and nearly four decades away. Tense and unforgiving, Mỹ Lai is “a gripping affair, beginning to end” (New York Times). Presented here alongside recollections by Vietnamese survivor Trần Văn Đức, it is a memorial to all the Mỹ Lai villagers killed on that grim day.

credits

released May 20, 2022

Kronos Quartet:
David Harrington, violin
John Sherba, violin
Hank Dutt, viola
Sunny Yang, cello

Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, t’ru’ng, Cfan bau, Cfan tranh
Rinde Eckert, vocalist

Music by Jonathan Berger
Libretto by Harriet Scott Chessman

Produced by Scott Fraser and Kronos Quartet
Recorded by Scott Fraser at Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, California, March 26-30, 2018
Assistant Engineer: Robert Kirby
Mixed by Scott Fraser and Kronos Quartet
Mastered by Scott Fraser
Executive Producer: Janet Cowperthwaite
Project Supervisor for Kronos: Reshena Liao
Annotated by Jonathan Berger and Tran Van Due

Dedicated to the memory of Larry Colburn

Cover Photo by Ronald Haeberle
Artist photo by Zoran Orlic

Audio sample of Quang Ngai lullaby by Pham Thi Mac used with permission from the Vietnam Institute of Musicology.
Audio sample from J.B. Lenoir’s “Vietnam Blues” (1980, L+R Records) courtesy of Bellaphon records GmbH, Germany.

For the Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association: Janet Cowperthwaite, Executive Director; with Mason Dille, Dana Dizon, Sarah Donahue, Reshena Liao, Nikolas McConnie-Saad, and Karen Nagy.

My Lai (music by Jonathan Berger, libretto by Harriet Scott Chessman) was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, and Van-Anh Vanessa Vo by the Harris Theater for Music and Dance with support from the Laura and Ricardo Rosenkranz Artistic Innovation Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Gerbode-Hewlett Foundations 2013 Music Commissioning Awards initiative, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

My Lai was recorded with support from Donald and Karen Evarts.

My Lai received its world premiere at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Chicago, IL, on January 29, 2016, with Larry Colburn, one of the other two men in Hugh Thompson Jr.’s helicopter crew, in attendance. The production was also presented by Singapore International Festival of Arts in Singapore; BAM’s Next Wave Festival in Brooklyn, NY; Cal Performances in Berkeley, CA; Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA in Los Angeles, CA; and Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City, IA.

For the live production of My Lai:
Mark DeChiazza, Rinde Eckert, directors/set designers
Mark DeChiazza, video projections designer
Brian H. Scott, lighting designer Drew Cameron, creative consultant Janet Cowperthwaite, producer
Kronos Performing Arts Association, production management

Special thanks to: Mark DeChiazza, Brian H. Scott, Drew Cameron, Scott Fraser, Brian Mohr, Gregory Kuhn; Michael Tiknis, Joe Melillo, Keng Sen Ong, Matras Tarnopolsky, Kristy Edmunds, Jacob Yarrow, Chris Lorway; Pham Minh Huong, Tran Due Van, David Calleja, Jeannette Boudreau, Connie Field, Maureen Jules, Trent Angers; Regan Harrington, Mizue, Holland, and Jason Sherba, Greg Dubinsky, and Frederic Rosselet.

Smithsonian Folkways Executive Producers: Daniel E. Sheehy and John Smith
Production Manager: Mary Monseur
Production Assistant: Kate Harrington
Editorial Assistance by James Deutsch and Frank Proschan
Art Direction, Design, and Layout by Caroline Gut

Press

Monodrama MY LAI Comes to BAM Harvey Theater

Kronos Quartet’s Asia-Pacific premiere of Vietnam War-themed opera at arts fest