The movie “The Sound of Music” was filmed 60 years ago in Salzburg, Austria, where residents are less than enthusiastic about the von Trapp family story that draws hordes of tourists each year.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
A rebellious would-be nun who charmed a stern captain and his seven children. Well, that story has enchanted people around the world for decades.
MARTÍNEZ: A rebellious would-be nun who charmed a stern captain and his seven children. Well, that story has enchanted people around the world for decades.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE SOUND OF MUSIC”)
JULIE ANDREWS: (Singing) The hills are alive with the sound of music.
MARTÍNEZ: “The Sound Of Music” was filmed 60 years ago in Salzburg, Austria. That small city at the foot of the Alps is getting ready for a big celebration next year. NPR’s Olivia Hampton traveled there and brings us this story.
MARTÍNEZ: “The Sound Of Music” was filmed 60 years ago in Salzburg, Austria. That small city at the foot of the Alps is getting ready for a big celebration next year. NPR’s Olivia Hampton traveled there and brings us this story.
OLIVIA HAMPTON, BYLINE: Salzburg has a population of just 160,000 people, but nearly 3 million tourists visit each year. Many of them come from all over the world to see where “The Sound Of Music” was shot. And this pilgrimage of sorts brings around a billion euros each year to the city.
DHANANJAY RAVAL: I don’t think I ever – that I come here, and I’m so excited (laughter).
HAMPTON: Dhananjay Raval traveled from India to fulfill his dream, standing before the gazebo where Liesl and Rolf sang “Sixteen Going On Seventeen.”
RAVAL: Time is going on, 60 years, but the story and song is forever.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing) You are 16 going on 17, baby.
HAMPTON: He got here on a bus from Panorama Tours. Around 40,000 people joined the tour each year. The same bus company transported the film’s stars and crew in 1964.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing) You are 16 going on 17.
HAMPTON: Lydia Weiner traveled with her sister Cynthia from North Carolina. She’s seen the film about 20 times.
LYDIA WEINER: Our mother was a Holocaust refugee, so it really spoke to our family in that way. And, of course, the love story.
HAMPTON: Salzburg plans to open a museum dedicated to the film in 2026. It will be near that same gazebo in the gardens of Hellbrunn Palace. Peter Husty will be the museum’s curator.
PETER HUSTY: I want to tell the success of the film, where it is coming from, where is it going. And I want to inform the visitors that the background of the Hollywood film is the story of a real family in Salzburg, and what have they really done and what was their life.
HAMPTON: Because before the film, there was the Broadway musical, the German film and the story of a real family. Their musical talents helped spare them the worst of the horrors of World War II. There were, in fact, 10 von Trapp children. And among Salzburg’s regular visitors is…
ELISABETH VON TRAPP: Elisabeth von Trapp. And I’m the daughter of Werner von Trapp, depicted in “The Sound Of Music” as Kurt.
HAMPTON: We caught up at a cafe where she was celebrating getting her tour guide license.
VON TRAPP: There’s so many people that are being displaced around the world, millions of people making a new life. It just is perchance that my grandmother’s story was chosen to come on Broadway.
HAMPTON: “Sound of Music” mania will reach a new peak next year with the 60th anniversary of the theatrical release. There’s a planned music special with new arrangements of the Rodgers and Hammerstein songs, stars like Babyface, Pentatonix and Thalia are in the lineup. And von Trapp family members and other celebrities will mingle at a gala dinner. There’s even a maker of traditional dirndl dresses who’s planning an exhibit of the film’s costumes. Despite all that fuss, many locals don’t feel an emotional connection to the story. Many haven’t even seen the film at all.
HUSTY: I’m typically for the Salzburg people. I did not know anything about the film until I was an adult person.
HAMPTON: Husty explains that, for one, the venues are completely mixed up. What was made to seem one location, say the von Trapp home, was in fact, many different ones.
HUSTY: The story was too romantic. It was tears cutting out of your eyes. And the von Trapp, they left their home. For the others, it was not possible to go away, only for the noble family. And then all the other people in the film seemed to be Nazis.
HAMPTON: It’s easy to give into the romanticism here. Take Leopoldskron Palace, built by the prince-archbishop in the 18th century.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS ON GRAVEL)
MARTIN WEISS: The view that we have here is basically the same that the archbishop had in 1736.
HAMPTON: The Salzburg Global Seminar has called it home since 1947. Martin Weiss, a former Austrian ambassador to the U.S., runs the group.
WEISS: We really are much more a platform that brings people together.
HAMPTON: It’s an echo to the ideals behind the Salzburg Festival, founded more than a century ago by Jewish theater producer Max Reinhardt. He inspired the film’s Uncle Max.
WEISS: His two partners in crime was Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a writer and poet, and Richard Strauss, the composer. It was really in this Schloss, in the red salon, where the three of them did their brainstorming and came up with this idea after this terrible devastation of World War I – millions of people killed, Europe really at its knees. Their philosophy was, we have to bring people together. What language can we possibly use? Of course, the arts.
HAMPTON: Maria and the children fell out of a rowboat in the pond here. The Untersberg Mountains rise out in the distance. Hollywood fiction has the family fleeing there, but they would have landed in Hitler’s mountain retreat, the infamous Eagle’s Nest on the other side. The real von Trapps knew their geography. They left Austria for a concert tour. From Italy, they found their way to Vermont. Their lodge is still a major tourist attraction there. Across from the Mirabell Gardens in downtown Salzburg lies one of the world’s oldest continuing marionette theaters. It inspired the film’s “Lonely Goatherd” puppet scene.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE SOUND OF MUSIC”)
ANDREWS: (Singing) High on a hill was a lonely goatherd, layee odl, layee odl layee-oo (ph).
HAMPTON: Today the theater presents its own “Sound Of Music” show. General manager Susanne Tiefenbacher is standing backstage before a show.
SUSANNE TIEFENBACHER: We can see it with all of our shows, from the child from 3, 4 years on, up to big strong men, they are touched by the movement, the story and the ability what is possible and shown on stage by the marionette.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE SOUND OF MUSIC”)
JULIE ANDREWS AND UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (Singing) You can sing most anything.
HAMPTON: Around 600 wooden figurines are hanging by strings all around her. This is what puppeteers call their holy chamber. Each production requires multiple versions of the same character. There can be up to 90 puppets requiring up to 11 puppeteers each time. Everything is handmade from the puppets to the costumes and sets.
TIEFENBACHER: After not even a minute, you will have forgotten that these are puppets.
HAMPTON: It’s just one of many ways “The Sound Of Music” story lives on.
Olivia Hampton, NPR News, Salzburg.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE SOUND OF MUSIC”)
ANDREWS AND UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (Singing) Do, do, ti, la, so, fa, mi, re, do.
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