Passion Piece on The Sound of Music

Passion Piece on The Sound of Music

One of my most favorite plays is The Sound of Music. I want to give you a little background on The Sound of Music Broadway show. The Sound of Music is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Many songs from the musical have become standards, including the title song "The Sound of Music", "Edelweiss", "My Favorite Things", "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" and "Do-Re-Mi".

The original Broadway production, starring Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel, opened in November 1959, and the show has enjoyed numerous productions and revivals since then. It has also been made into an Academy Award-winning 1965 film musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The Sound of Music was the final musical written by Rodgers and Hammerstein; Hammerstein died of cancer nine months after the Broadway premiere.

The Sound of Music opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 16, 1959, moved to the Mark Hellinger Theatre on November 6, 1962 and closed on June 15, 1963) after 1,443 performances. The director was Vincent J. Donehue and the choreographer Joe Layton. The original cast included Mary Martin (at 46) as Maria, Theodore Bikel as Captain Georg von Trapp, Patricia Neway as Mother Abbess, Kurt Kasznar as Max Detweiler, Marion Marlowe as Elsa Schraeder, Brian Davies as Rolf, and Lauri Peters as Liesl.

The production shared the Tony Award for Best Musical with Fiorello!. It also won for Best Actress in a Musical (Mary Martin), Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Patricia Neway), Best Scenic Design of a Musical (Oliver Smith), and Best Musical Direction (Frederick Dvonch) and was nominated for Best Featured Actor in a Musical (both Theodore Bikel and Kurt Kasznar) and Best Director of a Musical (Vincent J. Donehue). The entire children's cast was nominated for Best Featured Actress category as a single nominee, even though two children were boys.

Martha Wright replaced Mary Martin in the role of Maria on Broadway in October 1961, followed by Jeannie Carson in July 1962 and Nancy Dussault in September 1962. Jon Voight, who eventually married co-star Lauri Peters, was a replacement for Rolf's part. The national tour starred Florence Henderson, and opened at the Riviera Theatre, Detroit on February 27, 1961 and closed November 23, 1963 at the O'Keefe Center, Toronto. Henderson was succeeded by Barbara Meister in June 1962.

The original Broadway cast album sold three million copies. After doing some research about The Sound of Music, I found some interesting facts about the origin of the play. After viewing The Trapp Family, a 1956 Austrian film about the von Trapp family, and its 1958 sequel, The Trapp Family in America (Die Trapp-Familie in America), stage director Vincent J. Donehue thought that the project would be perfect for his friend Mary Martin; Broadway producers Leland Hayward and Richard Halliday (Martin's husband) agreed. The producers originally envisioned a nonmusical play that would be written by Lindsay and Crouse and that would feature songs from the repertoire of the Trapp Family Singers. Then they decided to add an original song or two, perhaps by Rodgers and Hammerstein. But it was soon agreed that the project should feature all new songs and be a musical rather than a play.

Details of the history of the von Trapp family were altered for the musical. Georg Ludwig von Trapp lived with his family in a villa in Aigen, a suburb of Salzburg. The real Maria von Trapp was sent to be a tutor to one of the children, not a governess to all of them. The Captain's oldest child was a boy, not a girl, and the names of the children were changed (at least partly to avoid confusion: the Captain's second eldest daughter, the third of the seven, was also called Maria). The von Trapps spent some years in Austria after Maria and the Captain married – they did not have to flee right away – and they fled to Italy, not Switzerland. Maria von Trapp is said to have been unhappy with the movie's portrayal of her husband as having been cold and stern prior to her arrival, which she and their children strongly dispute.

During the Cold War, the BBC planned to broadcast The Sound of Music on radio in the event of a nuclear strike on the United Kingdom. The broadcast would be part of an emergency timetable of programs designed to "reassure" the public in the aftermath of the attack.

I really love this musical because I love all the singing and dancing that goes along with this musical. I love the movie, I just watch it over and over. I like how the story ends with the nanny ending up with the father of all the kids at the end of the movie. It is just a truly well written and a romantic piece of work.