The curious crusade to explain The Sound of Music to baffled Austrian locals

Telegraph

2 days ago

To celebrate the 60 th anniversary of The Sound of Music movie earlier this year, Peter Husty, Chief Curator of the Salzburg Museum, decided to mark it – appropriately enough – with a tune.
The carillon of bells on the top of the museum can play most anything, as Maria sings in the film. Husty decided to play 'Edelweiss', and outside passing Americans gazed up in wonder. The locals, though, were bemused. What on earth, they asked, is that?
It seems a matter of equal bewilderment to the rest of us that the top-grossing musical film of all time is unknown in the city where it is so memorably set.
There's the abbey where Maria is a postulant; the Mirabell Gardens with the Pegasus fountain (now commonly known as the Do-Re-Mi fountain); the beautiful Leopoldskron Schloss where Maria and the children fall in the lake; the Felsenreitschule theatre where the family gives a concert before their escape; the catacombs of St Peter's cemetery where they hide from the Nazis.
Sound of Music fans want to see them all, so there are always packed bus and walking tours, and even one with von Trapp-style bikes with baskets on the handlebars.
When you're in Salzburg, the film's fans are everywhere. It's just that they're not Austrian.
For much of the rest of the world, though, the only thing they know about Salzburg is the film. When President Reagan greeted the Austrian head of state, he was disappointed to discover that 'Edelweiss' is not, in fact, the Austrian national anthem (but a song, of course, by Rodgers and Hammerstein).
When a business delegation visited China, one Chinese fellow-delegate rose to his feet and sang the song. Five hundred of his countrymen joined in. The Austrians didn't know the words (or so I'm told by my tour guide on the Sound of Music bus).
An Austrian competitor on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was asked to name a song with a flower in its name from the film. She didn't know. She phoned a friend. She didn't know either.
She lost, they say, quite a lot of money. Austrian indifference to the movie, especially in Salzburg, is legendary.
Peter Husty and the Salzburg Museum are hoping to change all that in this anniversary year, and to persuade their fellow countrymen to embrace the film. To this end, Husty has opened a pop-up exhibition in Schloss Leopoldskron for the entire year and, next year, will open a permanent and much larger version at Schloss Hellbrunn.
This Schloss is already a mainstay of the Sound of Music tour as it's one of the two palaces used to represent the von Trapp home (the front) and is also where the gazebo was relocated.
Originally, that was at Leopoldskron (the back of the von Trapp home in the film) but people were forever climbing over the wall to sing, dance and wake up the owners. Sadly, it is no longer possible to go inside the gazebo for reasons of health and safety.
One 82-year-old American lady was so overcome at being in the Sixteen, Going on Seventeen location she decided to recreate the scene, including the leaps from bench to bench. Sadly, she broke an ankle…
I started my own straw poll in the taxi from Salzburg Airport. Had she ever seen the film, I asked my driver? No, she said, she didn't know anyone in Salzburg who had.
I did eventually find two locals who admitted to having watched it. One, Elisabeth, who took me on a walking tour, had watched it, 'but only since I became a guide'. The other, Cornelia, had seen it some years ago because her music teacher at school had been Julie Andrews' voice coach. So how do the locals explain their reluctance?
The main reason appears to be that, as far as Austrians are concerned, this was just a remake. The von Trapp story had been told ten years before the Sound of Music in a German film – they even made a follow-up, tracing the continuing von Trapp saga in America.
These films had proper Austrian folk songs (as sung by the von Trapps) and real dirndls. Why would anyone want to see the American version that got all of this – and much of the real von Trapp story – wrong?
Not forgetting that the Austrians might have had quite enough of the Americans who had occupied Salzburg for 10 years after the Second World War, adapting a story that wasn't theirs to take, and showing some rather distasteful scenes featuring swastikas in the process.
There can be little doubt, though, that the film has served the city well, bringing millions of tourists to visit. The locals are bemused but tolerant – all the sing-a-longs and frolics round the Mirabell Gardens are regarded as harmless eccentricity. Peter Husty and others have, though, launched something of a crusade to persuade the Salzburgers to take a look for themselves.
As well as the exhibition, there are numerous showings of the film, a Sound of Music gala in October, and performances of the musical at both the Landestheater and Marionette Theatres, not to mention guided hikes and picnics in the mountains (you don't have to go all the way to Switzerland).
At the delightful Hyperion Hotel next door to the Mirabell Gardens, even a Salzburg Sound Menu that features a deconstructed apfelstrudel and a delicious veal dish (though not, as Christian Rothbauer, the hotel manager, pointed out, quite like the one in the song. 'Austrians would never have schnitzel with noodles.').
This is, after all, a rather conservative town and they do things properly here. Even if the locals get to see the film, they aren't really the sing-a-long type. And you certainly won't find anyone to hire you out a dirndl for your Julie Andrews impersonation.
Nevertheless, Salzburg cannot escape the von Trapp story and, in an age of film tourism, this beautiful Austrian city is still surely the grandaddy of all movie destinations.
And although Salzburg's greatest and proudest draw remains the Salzburg classical music festival, and Wolfgang Mozart its most famous son – you might nevertheless posit Julie Andrews as its most famous daughter.
I just wouldn't do it out loud, if I were you.
Essentials
The HYPERION Hotel Salzburg has rooms from £219 per night, including breakfast. Ryanair flies from London to Salzburg from £43 return. For more information, visit salzburg.info and salzburgerland.com.