The Sound of Music

The hills came alive!

This year marked the 50th Anniversary of The Sound of Music. It is both fitting and appropriate that Bolton School staged this charming and well-loved musical in March 2015, during the celebrations of 100 years of the foundation of the present school and 500 years of education in Bolton. We also discovered that the Captain von Trapp’s first wife, mother of the 7 children who feature in the musical, descended from Bolton School Old Boy, Robert Whitehead! The cast and crew really were superb and received rave reviews for their ‘five star’ production. Old Boy Malcolm Howe in his review of the production, which was included in From Torpedoes to The Sound of Music, remarked “Charlotte Hopkins was a marvellous Maria, a superb soprano who stole our hearts singing with crystal clarity, a ravishing rival to Julie Andrews. Giorgio Arnetoli portrayed Georg von Trapp with the appropriate gravitas, reflecting well the captain´s personality changes from naval disciplinarian, to becoming next an enchanted bride groom and then finally a veritable ´boy in the band’. Robert Whitehead´s great-grandchildren´ were great singers indeed and the Nonnberg nuns sweet fun, particularly Natalie Henderson´s portrayal of the Mother Abbess”.