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Mỹ Lai

Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ
Mỹ Lai

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.

Click here to read a historical essay by Fred Kaplan.

Audio
First Landing: Descent (Excerpt)

Track Listing

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101
Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ
07:55
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102
Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ
09:37
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103
Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ
07:04
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104
Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ
14:14
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105
Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ
08:29
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106
Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ
12:32
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107
Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ
05:16
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108
Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ
05:39