Sound of Music museum opens where the von Trapp story met Hollywood

SALZBURG, Austria -- An Austrian museum is alive with “The Sound of Music,” a first-ever venue devoted to the classic 1965 singalong movie starring Julie Andrews.

The Sound of Music Salzburg museum, situated in an Austrian city famed for music and perhaps best known as the home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, opened Sunday.

The attendees included Elisabeth von Trapp, granddaughter of Georg and Agathe von Trapp, whose family story inspired the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical and Hollywood blockbuster. She continues to give guided tours of movie sites in Salzburg today.

“It is intimate enough so you really have a beautiful sense of the storyline of both the Sound of Music and the Trapp family singers — my relatives. I’m very proud of that,” Elisabeth von Trapp said of the new museum.

Her father, Werner, was one of the original Trapp Family Singers — although moviegoers know his character by another name. “My father is depicted in the movie as Kurt; his name was Werner von Trapp. Just to set the record straight,” von Trapp said.

Housed in the 17th-century Hellbrunn Palace, where many scenes from the film were shot, the museum distinguishes the real-life story of the von Trapp family from that of the 1959 Broadway musical and later the Hollywood blockbuster.

Set against Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, the story centers on a governess named Maria who teaches seven children in the von Trapp family to sing and love music — before falling in love with their father and her employer, widower Georg von Trapp.

Museum officials note the real von Trapp, a submarine commander in the Austro-Hungarian navy, was “not a strict paternalist” — as he was depicted by the film’s leading man, Christopher Plummer — but “a considerate, albeit much-burdened, father.”

Visitors are treated to nearly 450 objects including props and costumes from the film, cinema posters and recordings of the music. A centerpiece is the gazebo where teenagers Liesl von Trapp and her suitor Rolf sing the courtship duet “Sixteen going on Seventeen.”

Fans of the film — which collected five Oscars including best picture — have long flocked to Salzburg: Several hundred thousand visit the city each year.

John and Terry Combs, a couple from Dayton, Ohio, were accompanying von Trapp on her walking tour through Salzburg.

“I love the combination of it being much about the movie, of course, but about the real von Trapp family, which I’ve read much about over the years,” said Terry Combs. “And having met and known Elisabeth a little bit — it just brought it full circle.”

The new exhibition is open daily until Nov. 1. After a brief bidding of “So long, farewell” to visitors late this year, the museum is scheduled to reopen next March.