The Sound of Music features the love story between a renegade nun-turned-governess and her austere employer, the stern Austrian naval captain (played by Christopher Plummer) who treats his seven children more like cadets than kids. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the rise of Nazism in 1930s Austria, it’s a story that seems too perfect to be true – and though it is based on the memoirs of the real Maria von Trapp, the story takes many creative liberties to add dramatic tension.
Maria’s memoirs were turned into a live stage musical before being adapted again into the beloved musical film. The broadest strokes remain the same: Maria marries into the family instead of becoming a nun, the von Trapps bring their music to the country before fleeing the rise of Nazism. However, some details change. Character ages and timelines are tinkered with to serve the narrative, and some prominent characters are fictionalized, while others are taken out of the story completely. Julie Andrew’s iconic portrayal of Maria von Tapp is legendary, but Maria’s description of herself in her own memoir reveals a different life.
The Sound Of The Music Is Based On A Play, Which Is Based On A True Story
Maria von Trapp’s memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers was adapted by the theater-writing team of Rodgers and Hammerstein in 1959 into a live musical titled The Sound of Music. Six years later, the stage musical became an Academy Award-winning eponymous musical film.
The timeline of events was condensed to create a sense of haste. In the film, Maria and Captain von Trapp are married barely a month before the family flees Austria, but in actuality, Maria and the Captain lived in matrimony for 11 years and even had two children before they left the country. Similarly, the climax of the film is the von Trapps’ dramatic escape from right under the Nazis’ noses at a public singing competition, crossing the Alps by foot. In real life, the departure was far less dramatic: the von Trapps left Austria publicly by train for Italy, under the guise of a family vacation before absconding for the United States.
Other details were adjusted to heighten stakes. In the film, the von Trapp family is just starting their performance career, while in real life they had performed internationally as a recognized group. In fact, it was their established career that helped their emigration status in the United States. Along those lines, in the film, Captain von Trapp is quite wealthy, with the Nazi government holding the purse strings as a form of control, while in actuality the von Trapp fortune had already been impacted by the collapse of their bank.
How Accurate The Sound Of Music Is Compared To The True Story
While dates and facts were certainly altered to suit the story, even the characterizations are only based on the true people. Some characters were added to create emotional complications, while others were amalgamated for simplicity. The Captain’s 10 children were combined into seven, and one named Maria was taken out to avoid confusion. The characters Rolfe and Baroness Elsa von Schraeder have no fictional counterparts. Rolfe serves as a romantic interest for young Leslie von Trapp and a face for the burgeoning Nazi movement, while the Baroness adds a complicating factor to what could be a straightforward romance between Maria and the Captain.
The real Maria was not a problematically free-spirited novice, but a woman with a strong sense of duty.
Even the characters of Maria and the Captain were shaped by creative liberties. In the film, Maria brings love and laughter back into the home, with the Captain beginning the film as a strict disciplinarian who summons his children with individualized dog whistles. In real life, the children described their father as warm and loving. The real Maria was not a problematically free-spirited novice, but a woman with a strong sense of duty. In The Sound of Music movie, as in real life, Maria fell in love with the children before she fell for their father.
