‘The Sound of Music’: A Family Tradition
In a movie scene permanently etched in the minds of many, Julie Andrews holds a golden-haired girl close to her chest while hiding in the tomblike chamber of a convent in Austria. “You must be very quiet. Hold tight to me,” she says as SS soldiers rush into the room, boots pounding and whistles shrilling.
It might be easy to forget that “The Sound of Music” is based on a true story, but the von Trapps existed long before Rodgers and Hammerstein’s catchy tunes, and the family’s musical legacy lives on. In fact, the great-grandchildren of Georg von Trapp, the patriarchal captain — Sofia, 20; Melanie, 18; Amanda, 17, and Justin, 13 — have become singing sensations in their own right.
The young von Trapps tour nine months out of the schoolyear, and they visited the Holocaust Museum Houston earlier this summer before performing with the Houston Symphony on July 19.
While the four singers have been to Dachau, Sofia explains this was their first visit to a Holocaust museum. They were given a private tour, and Sofia described the visit as extremely moving. “It’s amazing to think that could have been our family had we not escaped in 1938,” she said, remarking on her great-grandfather’s refusal to lead a Nazi submarine fleet.
The von Trapps, who live in Kalispell, Mont., are taking a break for the rest of the summer and will begin touring again this fall.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO