The hills are alive
October 20, 2011
"The Sound of Music" will premiere in Salzburg, Austria, where it is set, for the first time since the 1965 film debut of the popular musical starring Julie Andrews. The sing-along classic has never been performed in Salzburg, despite drawing around 300,000 fans to the city each year.
On October 23, the Salzburg State Theater celebrates the first performance of the musical, which will run through June of 2012. Tickets for the 2011 showings are already sold out.
The Rodgers and Hammerstein story has been translated into an Austrian German dialect but will be presented with English subtitles for international guests. According to the Salzburg tourism board, "The Sound of Music" is an even bigger tourist draw for the city than its other magnet: the legacy of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the home where he was born.
But the musical has never really caught on in German-speaking countries, despite its popularity abroad.
Salzburg State Theater's musical director Carl Philip von Maldeghem told the AFP news agency that he first became aware of the musical's huge popularity outside Austria and his native Germany as an exchange student in the United States.
"I was in Iowa, in the Midwest," he said. "The family watched 'The Sound of Music' every Christmas, and we all enjoyed it very much."
The musical's plot, in which the von Trapp family flees from the Nazis during World War II, may have been an unwelcome subject when the film debuted in the 1960s, but its lack of popularity in the German speaking world is also a matter of taste.
"People here couldn't really get on with the Hollywood version. If you are not from around here it was all so beautiful and romantic and everything, but for locals it was just kitschy," Andrea Heitzer from Salzburg's tourism board said.
Tempering the kitsch factor
Director Andreas Gergen said that the Salzburg team has done what they could to avoid the kitsch factor in their presentation of the musical.
"The specifications from the publisher are strict, but we made sure to embed the story in its historical and political context," Gergen explained.
The Salzburg Museum is making a further effort to offer a historical take on the von Trapps by presenting an extensive exhibition on the singing family.
Calling the von Trapp family a "reflection of the 20th century," head curator Peter Husty said that the lives of the individuals at the heart of the musical will be documented by way of original objects, interviews and photographs.
The exhibition titled "The Trapp Family: Reality and the 'Sound of Music'" can be seen through November 2012, longer than the musical is currently planned to run.
Author: Greg Wiser (AFP, dpa)
Editor: Kate Bowen