On March 16, 1968, the United States Army killed over 500 unarmed civilians in the hamlet of My 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 My Lai, composed by Jonathan Berger (music) and Harriet Scott Chessman (libretto) for Kronos Quartet, Vietnamese multi-instrumentalist Vn-nh Vanessa V, and vocalist Rinde Eckert. This definitive recording of My 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, My Lai is "a gripping affair, beginning to end" (New York Times). Presented here alongside recollections by Vietnamese survivor Tran Van Duc, it is a memorial to all the My Lai villagers killed on that grim day.
