Jonathan Berger
My Lai (2015)
a monodrama for voice, tenor, string quartet and Vietnamese instruments
libretto by Harriet Scott Chessman. staging and direction by Mark DeChiazza
Recording on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
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Reviews:
Review by Jacki Apple in Fabrik
NY Times review by James Oesterich
NPR Weekend Edition – Neda Ulaby
The massacre of over 500 innocent civilians by American soldiers in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968, was one of the darkest moments of the Vietnam War – one that traumatized the nation and swayed the course of history. The events of that day may well have gone unnoticed save for the actions of a young army helicopter pilot who, by happenstance, witnessed the killing in the course of a routine reconnaissance flight. Appalled by what he saw, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson attempted to intercede, first by reporting the incident, then by landing his helicopter between the civilians and the troops. Aghast at his inability to stop the slaughter, in a moment of enormous passion, Thompson threatened to open fire on his own troops. Failing to stop the carnage, he pulled a wounded child from its dead mother’s grasp and flew him to safety. Thompson’s refusal to remain silent about the massacre forced the military to conduct an inquiry and trial that shook the national conscience, and left Thompson vilified as a disloyal outcast for much of his life.
Scored for tenor, traditional Vietnamese instruments, and string quartet, My Lai is set in a hospital room, where Thompson, surrendering to cancer, faces death under hospice care. Feeling neither heroic, nor particularly proud of what he did, the consequences of Thompson’s naïve, idealistic attempt to stop the carnage are pieced together in an effort to seek closure and resolution. My Lai simultaneously represents a continuation of my creative path and an exciting departure into new sound worlds. As was the case in my recent work The War Reporter, My Lai seeks a mode of expression in which the political and societal underpinnings of conflict, and its senseless brutality are set through a character study of an individual who unintentionally becomes inextricably bound up in the fray of war.
My Lai is in three acts:
I. First Landing
Flight
Descent
The Ditch
II. Second Landing
Hovering
The Bunker
III. Third Landing
Postcard
Fishing
My Lai was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, and Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Gerbode-Hewlett Foundation, the Harris Theater for Music and Dance and the Laura and Ricardo Rosenkranz Artistic Innovation Fund.
Performance materials available upon request
See Connie Fields’ documentary on the opera, The Whistleblower of My Lai