Doesn’t Love

If they really love it, theatergoers sometimes see a show a second time. Some shows, particularly musicals, are family favorites enjoyed by several generations. And some memorable show music is sung or hummed by kids and adults alike. Some music from Broadway sticks in peoples’ heads for decades. But rarely are ALL these phenomena true.

The exception might be The Sound of Music.

And what of the story itself? How ‘true to life’ is it? Does it even matter? Did Maria, a young Austrian nun, really ‘run to the hills’ above Salzburg, spread her arms and sing about her love of music? Did she find comfort in dreams of copper kettles and woolen mittens? Did she moon over Georg’s dreamy serenade about edelweiss? Could these heartwarming things actually happen while Nazism was spreading across central Europe?

No, the real-life Maria von Trapp did none of this. She was indeed a former nun, and yes, she married Count Georg von Trapp. Maria became stepmother to his large brood of children, but few of the many other personal details Maria revealed in her 1949 book, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, were incorporated into the legendary Broadway musical her memoir inspired.

Set in 1938 Austria, The Sound of Music was a smash from the first night the curtain went up on Broadway in 1959

So many of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s songs — including “Do Re Mi,” “My Favorite Things,” and “Climb Ev’ry Mountain”— quickly entered the popular canon, and the original cast recording was nearly as big as the show itself. It soared to the top of the Billboard album charts.

When The Sound of Music debuted on movie screens in 1965, audiences in huge numbers fell in love again with this joyous celebration of music, patriotism and love. The Sound of Music is still streamed somewhere every day of the year and has been shown on television networks as a “must-watch” Christmas tradition for generations.