WASHINGTON — Exactly 50 years ago today — March 10, 1965 — the movie musical masterpiece “The Sound of Music” made its Los Angeles premiere.
On Saturday, Elisabeth Von Trapp, the real-life granddaughter of Maria and Baron Von Trapp, will perform in Springfield, Virginia, in a private show at Greenspring.
The set list will be eclectic.
“I usually say Bach to Broadway, Schubert to Sting and everything in between,” Von Trapp tells WTOP. “But it does include Rodgers and Hammerstein … I do know quite a few from ‘The Sound of Music,’ but I’m very careful what I select for my audience. … I pepper it in. … As a matter of fact, when I do sing my ‘Sound of Music’ songs, they are very much my own arrangement, and that’s the fun of it.”
Von Trapp has toured the globe, performing everywhere from Russia to Shanghai, Bethlehem to D.C., including shows at the Kennedy Center and National Cathedral.
She began performing at age 3, as the daughter of Werner von Trapp, depicted as the child Kurt in the movie. She has many fond childhood memories.
“I would never pass up the experience to go to visit my grandmother,” she says. “I always got so excited, because it was never dull. It was always a wonderful experience, and they had amazing life experiences that they shared.”
The 1965 film follows a woman (Julie Andrews) who leaves an Austrian convent to become a governess to the children of a naval officer widower (Christopher Plummer). But Von Trapp says her own grandmother was “very different” from Andrews.
“One of the first jobs I ever got was to work at my grandmother’s gift shop or tea room,” Von Trapp says. “People were standing in line to have their autograph from her, and this little boy waited for probably a half an hour with his mother getting very antsy. Finally, he was at the desk where my grandmother sat, and he looks up at her and he says, ‘You’re not Maria!’ … She looked at him and you could tell she was ready to scowl, and then she thought, ‘Nah, better not.'”
Still, she says, the essence of the character was very much her grandmother.
“What she embodies is this spirited, young woman … and she has courage, and she takes on this task and challenge and she meets it,” Von Trapp says. “She overcomes and she becomes even more who she should become, and that’s really the true essence of my grandmother’s life and story.”
Few films have seen such critical acclaim and popular success. The film won five Oscars, including Best Picture, and remains the third highest-grossing movie of all time, behind only “Gone With the Wind” (1939) and “Star Wars” (1977). It remains a pop-culture fixture, from Carrie Underwood performing in NBC’s “The Sound of Music Live!” to Lady Gaga performing at the 2015 Oscars.
“Twenty years ago when I was first being interviewed, there was a journalist that said there will never be a time where the name ‘Von Trapp’ wouldn’t sort of evoke this idea of ‘The Sound of Music,'” she says. “And it’s true.”
Still, Von Trapp speaks proudly of her sister, aunt and grandmother appearing as extras in the movie. You’ll see them in the background while Andrews sings “I Have Confidence.” Look for them below:
“My grandmother had a copy of that film, and she would play it for her guests every Friday night,” she says. “And if we came to visit on a Saturday and it was raining, my Aunt Hedwig would just make sure we were entertained, so she would play the movie for us. We couldn’t wait to see it over and over again.
“As a child, these fantasies of actually seeing these characters play your family story, what I think it did for me was to allow myself to truly understand that they were bigger than life.”
Hear the full interview with Elisabeth Von Trapp below:
