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Von Trapp family legacy comes to Bloomington
Maria von Trapp's descendant to perform area Christmas concert
By Dan Craft
dcraft@pantagraph.com
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Wouldn't every kid want the heroine of "The Sound of Music" as their grandmother? Of course they would.

Who better to help you climb every mountain? Locate a few of your favorite things? Assist you when you're 16 going on 17?

Lucky Elisabeth von Trapp: She didn't have to wish that the heroine of "The Sound of Music" was her grandmother.

She got her from the day she was born.

But the Maria von Trapp of "The Sound of Music" is not quite the Maria von Trapp of Elisabeth's family history, as it turns out.

The former is a quaintly romanticized vision of Maria. And it was cast for its movie version with an actress (Julie Andrews) who bore little resemblance to the real thing, either physically or temperamentally.

The real thing, on the other hand, was a dynamic force of nature -- a strong-willed matriarch who ended up presiding over a cottage music industry for nearly half a century, until her death in 1987.

That discrepancy won't keep Maria's granddaughter from including of a few of her favorite "Sound of Music" things in her solo holiday concert at 7:30 tonight in St. John's Lutheran Church in Bloomington (tickets are $20, with proceeds going to Lutheran Social Services of Illinois).

In fact, "My Favorite Things" is among the selections she includes in her performance -- along with the music that defines Elisabeth as her own performer.

That includes her own compositions, medieval hymns, Gregorian chants and, for the season at hand, Austrian Christmas carols "I've learned from relatives and my own father" -- all to the cello accompaniment of musician Erich Kory, who has worked with everyone from Leonard Bernstein to Sting to Tony Bennett.

"Growing up," she says, "I always understood that it ('Sound of Music') was a story that my grandmother wrote that was shaped into a musical -- one that's entertaining and has all the elements we enjoy in a musical. Like everyone else, I enjoy it, too. And I'm proud to know that one of the kids on the screen is actually my father."

Once again, artistic license rears its fiction-making head: Her father, who passed away just recently, was named Werner von Trapp.

But going down the "Sound of Music" cast list, we find no Werner von Trapp.

"It's strange in a sense that they changed his name," she agrees, adding that every one of the von Trapp kids' names was altered.

But comparing real names to stage names, it becomes apparent that the musical opted for punchier, more "Austrian-sounding" names like Liesl, Gretl, Kurt and Marta instead of the actual monikers, which included the likes of Eleonore, Rosemarie, Johannes and Rupert.

Werner's "Sound of Music" counterpart is Kurt. He's portrayed as the likeable von Trapp son with the upbeat spirits and ability to hit the high notes on songs like "So Long, Farewell."

"He comes across as very cheerful, and that sort of describes who he was. He had a great sense of humor and a beautiful tenor voice," Elisabeth says.

Ironically, she adds, the character in the script didn't really come across to her as the father she knew until she witnessed a marionette version of "Sound of Music" that recently began touring the country.

Since marionette shows are a tradition in Salzburg, Austria -- ground zero for the von Trapp family dynasty -- a "Sound of Music" with strings attached isn't as strange as it sounds.

"If you go to Salzburg and you want to be entertained, you go to a marionette theater," she notes.

The puppet version "just portrays the story very vividly and because it's in a different medium, it makes you listen to the story more." Along the way, she recognized more of the flesh-and-blood Werner in the song-and-dance Kurt than she had before.

During his lifetime, Elisabeth admits that her father had a problem with the way he was portrayed in the show. "He felt there were too many aspects of himself that were condensed into a fanciful way of presenting it. It was a little too much for him."

In terms of the stage-and-screen Maria vs. the real Maria, Elisabeth thinks the musical's authors erred on the side of likeability and accessibility. "In the process of designing the character, they took out the fact that she might have been a really strong character."

One glimmer of the real Maria did get through, Elisabeth admits, when she confronts Baron von Trapp over his aloofness with his children. "When she tells him off, there's this wonderful dialogue between the characters, and she doesn't seem so saccharine in that moment."

As for the real Maria, "I've been tremendously influenced by her and her life. I got to know her quite well, and she was a woman ahead of her time, a very strong personality ... a very different personally ... a forceful person of mythical proportions."

In addition, "she was witty, tender, wise and charming on her lecture tours, and a gracious hostess at the lodge (the Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont), presiding over it in true baronial style.

"She skied recklessly, rode horses and went on backpacking hikes into her 70s. The public and private Marias were conflicting anomalies, especially to the family and those connected with her -- she could be unpredictable and was not above being formidable."

Though the saga of the von Trapp family could, and has, filled a couple books, the facts of their history are still widely known after 70-odd years -- beginning in 1926, when Maria left a nunnery to take care of the large brood of an Austrian baron and widower, Georg von Trapp.

Eventually, the singing von Trapp family was formed and made famous in Austria. When the Nazis invaded in 1938, the family fled Austria and eventually wound up in Stowe, Vt. There, they settled and bought a farm.

Georg died in 1947. The sibling singers stopped touring by the mid-'50s.

Before "Sound of Music" dramatized their story, a pair of non-musical German-language films took the first crack, "Die Trapp-Familie" (1956) and "Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika" (1958). The Rodgers & Hammerstein musical arrived on Broadway in 1959, followed by the movie edition in 1965.

Tragedy struck in 1980, when the Trapp Family Lodge, built on the farm as a hotel, burned down, killing one guest and forcing 45 others, including the Baroness Maria herself, to flee in their nightclothes.

"That took away so much of the memorabilia that described the (von Trapp family) journey, and what I miss is being able to walk through it -- to me, it's like a chapter that has closed."

Today, Elisabeth is the only von Trapp family member pursuing a professional solo career. There is a quartet of teen nieces and nephews who have revived the Trapp Family Singers name. But she is the only direct heir to one of the original Trapp Family Singers carrying on the tradition full time.

"I have just such a respect and appreciation for what my relatives did -- they were true artists and true performers," says the granddaughter of Maria von Trapp.



At a glance



What: Elisabeth von Trapp Christmas Concert

When: 7:30 tonight

Where: St. John's Lutheran Church, 1617 E. Emerson St., Bloomington

Tickets: $20

Information number: (309) 827-6121



They didn't really climb every mountain



By Dan Craft | dcraft@pantagraph.com

"This is the West, sir: When the fact becomes legend, print the legend."

So goes the famous line from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," director John Ford's classic meditation on the tendency to mythologize history without due regard to the record.

If the legend makes for "better" history, then so be it ... and so print it.

It doesn't have to be the West for that dictum to rule, of course.

When it comes to taking a historical episode and dramatizing it for the stage or the screen, few holds are barred.

Take, for example, the case of Rodgers & Hammerstein's "The Sound of Music," which tells the story of Maria von Trapp, from her beginnings in an Austrian nunnery to her eventual role as tutor to a widower baron's large brood.

She teaches them to sing, weds the baron and escapes with her new family from the invading Nazis.

As presented on the stage in 1959 and the screen in 1965, the musical adaptation was a gigantic success in each medium, delighting audiences around the world.

But it was definitely a case of "printing the legend," agrees Maria's singing granddaughter Elisabeth, who sees little connection between the Maria Julie Andrews played on screen and the Maria she called grandmother.

Following is a list of the fictions set forth in "The Sound of Music," per both Elisabeth von Trapp and historian Joan Gearin from the U.S. National Archives & Records Administration's Winter 2005 newsletter.

• Fiction: Maria was hired as governess for Baron von Trapp's children.

• Fact: She was actually hired to tutor one of his children, Maria, stricken with scarlet fever.

• Fiction: Maria and the baron were married right before the 1938 Nazi takeover of Austria.

• Fact: They were married in 1927, 11 years before the Nazi invasion.

• Fiction: There were seven von Trapp children.

• Fact: There were 10 von Trapp children (seven from von Trapp's first marriage, three with Maria).

• Fiction: Maria taught the children how to sing and harmonize.

• Fact: The children already were into their musical education long before Maria arrived.

• Fiction: The children were named Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Marta and Gretl.

• Fact: The children were named Rupert, Agathe, Maria, Werner, Hedwig, Johanna, Martina, Rosemarie, Eleonore and Johannes.

• Fiction: Baron von Trapp was aloof from his family and initially disapproving of their musical pursuits.

• Fact: Baron von Trapp was a loving, gentle soul who enjoyed his singing brood from the get-go.

• Fiction: Maria, the Baron and the kids eluded the Nazis by fleeing on foot over the Alps to Switzerland, suitcases and instruments in hand.

• Fact: The von Trapp clan left Austria and the Nazis by boarding a train to Italy, with suitcases and instruments stored in baggage.

• Fiction: Maria von Trapp was forever sweet and even-tempered.

• Fact: Maria von Trapp, says granddaughter Elisabeth, "was a forceful personality of mythical proportions."

Take a look
Elisabeth von Trapp, granddaughter of "Sound of Music" inspiration Maria von Trapp, is the only member of the famous singing family pursuing a professional solo career today.
Julie Andrews, who played Maria von Trapp in the 1965 film version of "The Sound of Music," bore little resemblance to the real Maria, says her granddaughter.
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Reader comments on this story - 4 total

Note: All views and opinions expressed in reader comments are solely those of the individual submitting the comment, and not those of the Pantagraph or its staff.

cierra wrote on Jan 5, 2008 10:25 PM:

" are any of the von trapp children still living "

Betty wrote on Dec 17, 2007 2:28 PM:

" What an interesting article. I would love to know more of the story! "

fact wrote on Dec 15, 2007 7:47 AM:

" i cant believe i was dumb enough to read this "

Just got home... wrote on Dec 13, 2007 10:06 PM:

" ...from the concert. Wow - what a beautiful voice! "
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