What Really Happened?

The Sound of Music was based on a memoir by the real Maria called The Trapp Family Singers.  Maria was indeed a nun at a convent not far from the von Trapps' house, and she was sent from there to be a nanny in the mid-twenties.  No, she was not sent there within months of the German invasion as shown in the musical; by 1938 she and Captain von Trapp had already been married ten years and along with his seven children had two of their own and a third on the way.  By the way, the term Anschluss in the play is usually translated into English as annexation, which is close enough as far as I know.  Anyway, she was their nanny for a while, and the captain was hoping to marry someone named Princess Yvette or Yvonne.  (It's been a while since I read the book)  But he eventually dumped her for Maria, who was not exactly thrilled with the idea.  She went back to the convent, where the abbess told her she would be happier married to Captain von Trapp than as a nun.  I doubt, however, that she sang Climb Every Mountain or that she even sang at all.  (By the way, all the music was composed specifically for the show, for those of you like me who are so dense that that wasn't obvious)  However, they did sing together as a family in the evenings.  The captain wasn't quite as strict with his children as in the story, so Maria didn't really reintroduce joy into their lives, but she talks quite a lot in the book about how she reintroduced religion into their lives, proving that she indeed had once wanted to be a nun.  Sometime in the early thirties financial pressure from Germany forced their bank to close, and they went broke and had to take in boarders.  One of these was a retired music professor who got them to perform publicly, and they eventually nade it to the Salzburg Festival.  Despite what the musical says, they performed several times before the festival, and the captain never performed with the others.  They hated the Nazis, so they really did leave after the anschluss, though it wasn't quite so dramatic : they went on an approved vacation in Italy and kinda "forgot" to go back home.  Instead they formed a singing group and eventually-despite troubles at Ellis Island getting visas-set up a farm in Vermont where they held a summer camp with singing lessons.  The family still owns the farm today.  By the way, they got out of Italy just days before European borders closed.  In the late forties Captain von Trapp got sick and died from lung problems-probably cancer though according to the book he wasn't diagnosed-which likely came from his submarine service in World War I, but the family went on.  The stage version of The Sound of Music was completely accepted by the family-in fact, lead actress Mary Martin spent a lot of time getting to know Maria, who also offered to help with the movie but was not allowed for reasons she never knew.  So basically the musical is only based on the truth, but it's not too far off on the basics, and The Trapp Family Singers isn't the greatest book ever but it's interesting as a counterpoint to the fictional version.

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