Mỹ Lai

The Apocalypse Now image on the album cover and the title Mỹ Lai, the name of a terrible massacre of over 500 innocent civilians by US forces in Vietnam in 1968, drives home what this record is about. It’s a small-scale opera for one singer, string quartet and Vietnamese multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Võ (aka Vanessa Võ). It’s essentially the story of helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson who witnessed the incident, tried to intercede and, though failing to stop the carnage, saved a wounded child from the killing. It’s Thompson’s anguished memories of the incident as he’s dying of cancer many years later, bizarrely interrupted by a TV gameshow host, that comprises the action. The music is by Jonathan Berger, long obsessed by the incident, and lyrics by Harriet Scott Chessman.

I haven’t seen the piece in performance, but clearly it’s an intense affair moving from the beauty of the landscape into the horrors he discovers. Hugh Thompson’s vocal line sung by Rinde Eckert is angular and continually jumping between tenor and counter-tenor registers. It’s challenging listening with no discernible expressive reasons for the vocal leaps. The instrumental sections are much more satisfying. The opening ‘Mỹ Lai Lullaby’ begins with an archive recording and then moves into a largely instrumental section featuring Vân-Ánh Võ on dan tranh (zither), dan bau (one-string zither) and dan t’rung (bamboo xylophone) – heard in ‘First Landing: Flight’. Kronos have collaborated with her before. There’s a ‘Mỹ Lai Suite’ that Kronos are playing in concert. This seems a preferable option to the whole opera.