Actors - The Sound of Music

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	Actors - The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music is a Broadway musical and film based on the book The Von Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp. It contains many hit songs, including "Edelweiss", "My Favorite Things", "Climb Ev'ry Mountain", "Do-Re-Mi", "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" and "The Lonely Goatherd", as well as the title song. The film version was one of the biggest box office hits in cinema history.

Plot outline

In Salzburg, Austria, Maria, a woman studying to become a nun, is sent from her convent to be the governess to seven children of a widowed naval commander, Captain Georg Ritter von Trapp. The children, initially hostile and mischievous, come to like her, and the woman finds herself falling in love with the captain. He was soon to be married to a baroness but marries Maria instead. Maria teaches the children singing. Meanwhile, the Nazis take power in Austria as part of the Anschluss, and want Captain von Trapp back in service. However, during a singing performance in a guarded theater, the whole family flees and walks over the mountains to Switzerland.

It should be noted that details of the von Trapp story were altered for the play and the film. The Captain's eldest child was a boy, not a girl, and the names of the children were changed (at least partly to avoid confusion, as the Captain's second-eldest daughter was also called Maria). The repertoire of the Trapp Family Singers was entirely classical, with a special focus on early motets. The von Trapps spent some years in Austria after Maria and the Captain had married (in 1927) – they did not have to flee right away – and when they did it was to Italy, not Switzerland, via train not foot.

Versions

Early films

Two German/Austrian films, Die Trapp-Familie (The Trapp Family, 1956) and a sequel, Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika (1958), were written by Herbert Reinecker and directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner. Ruth Leuwerik played Maria, Hans Holt was von Trapp.

1959 Broadway musical

The Sound of Music, with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 16, 1959, and starred Mary Martin as Maria and Theodore Bikel as Captain Georg von Trapp. This production helped the musical to win Tony awards in 1959, and yielded a best-selling cast album on the Columbia label (3 million copies). The original Broadway production ran for 1,443 performances.

1961 London production

The London production opened at the Palace Theatre on May 18, 1961 and ran for 2,385 performances. Jean Bayless played Maria, Roger Dann played Captain Von Trapp and Constance Shacklock was the Mother Abbess.

1965 film

The film, which was released in 1965, was named Best Picture of the Year. Robert Wise won an Academy Award for Directing for the film, which stars Julie Andrews as Maria and Christopher Plummer (who reportedly dismissed the movie as "Sound of Mucus" ) as Captain von Trapp. Hammerstein died before the film was made, and two of the numbers added to the score were written solely by Rodgers: "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good", while three secondary songs were cut from the score and others were shifted to different scenes. The film grossed over $158 million at the North American box office. Adjusted for ticket price inflation this is the equivalent of $911 million at 2006 prices, putting it third on the list of all time inflation adjusted box office hits according to boxofficemojo.com. The soundtrack album on the RCA Victor label has sold over 11 million copies worldwide.

The film has since been seen on television and released on VHS and DVD for its 40th anniversary.

Cast

1981 London revival

In 1981, at producer Ross Taylor's urging, Petula Clark signed to star in a revival of the show at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London's West End. Despite her misgivings that at age 51 she was too old to play the role convincingly, Clark opened to unanimous rave reviews (and the largest advance sale in the history of British theatre at that time). Maria von Trapp herself, present at the opening night performance, described her as "the best" Maria ever. Due to an unprecedented demand for tickets, Clark extended her initial six-month contract to thirteen months. Playing to 101% of seating capacity, the show set the highest attendance figure for a single week (October 26–31, 1981) of any British musical production in history, as chronicled by The Guinness Book of Theatre. This was the first stage production to incorporate the two additional songs that Rodgers had composed for the film version. The cast recording of this production was the first to be recorded digitally, but the recording has never been released on compact disc.

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