Discovering Salzburg's Real 'Sound of Music'

My girlfriend and I sing, "The hills are alive with the sound of music..." as we drive on the Autobahn into the valley of the Lower Alps that opens wide before us.

I gasp, "It looks like Vermont."

The real-life von Trapps -- on which the Tony Award-winning musical and Academy Award-winning film, "The Sound of Music" is based -- settled in Vermont after they fled from their home in Salzburg during World War II.

My girlfriend and I have been looking forward to discovering more about the real von Trapps and going on The Sound of Music Tour for more than a year.

This spring marked the 50th anniversary of the movie starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. And who can forget Lady Gaga's amazing tribute to Rogers & Hammerstein's score at the Oscars earlier this year?

When my girlfriend and I started dating she was afraid to tell me that one of her favorite films was "The Sound of Music" (along with "Grease" and "Dirty Dancing," but I, too, have fond memories of watching the annual Christmas telecast. As soon as she mentioned it, I started singing, "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens..."

"These are a few of my favorite things..." she chimed in. We didn't care if we were off key or if we were humming and mumbling through parts of the song that we couldn't remember the lyrics to. We discovered that we were both somewhat "Sound of Music" fanatics.

Here we are, nearly seven years later, on the edge of our car seats, heading into the heart of Salzburg. The hills are truly alive, rich with green and blue lakes surrounded by clusters of houses and wide-open fields that have been there for decades if not for centuries. It's a Technicolor moment.

Salzburg

We are walking through Salzburg with our gay tour guide Roman Forisch, who is giving us a sneak peek at some of the sights included (and not included) on the traditional "Sound of Music" Tour. We are but a few of the estimated 300,000 visitors the movie draws to Salzburg every year.

The medieval city is filled with 20 Baroque cathedrals whose bells chime on the hour, gardens, and platzs (plazas), and I feel as if I've been here a thousand times. Nearly everywhere we step it's like we are walking right into a scene from the film, which shot here on location for 11 weeks.

The Abbey Nonnberg, where the real life Maria was a wannabe nun before becoming a governess and stepmother to the von Trapp children, is perched on a cliff high above Salzburg.

It is also where the real church (Hollywood used another more picturesque church) where Maria and Captain von Trapp married long before the Nazis came into power and invaded Austria. The only way up to the abbey, which was built in A.D. 714 and one of the oldest in the world, is to climb a set of stairs.

The locations and buildings are everywhere from the Mozartsteg cast iron bridge and St. Peter's Cemetery to Mirabell Palace and Gardens, which played host to many scenes, including Maria and the children marching along the edge of the Pegasus Fountain singing "Do-Re-Mi." A gay tip... Forisch says Rose Hill, just beyond the Pegasus Fountain, is a popular gay cruising area. What would Maria say (or sing)?!

Hollywood Takes Over

Spoiler alert: this is where the magical spell of the movie gets broken.

We visit the front of the von Trapp family movie house. The palatial terrace leading down to the lake where Gretel and Maria fall into the water along with the other children is so palatial because it's the Palace Leopoldskron. Frohnburg Palace was used for the scene where Captain von Trapp tears down the Nazi flag from the door upon the couple's return from their honeymoon. Neither have anything to do with the real home of the Von Trapp family, which is now a bed and breakfast, the Villa Trapp. They simply served as the exterior scenes of the movie home.

The gazebo where so many of Liesl and Rolf's love scenes took place was at one time in the Palace Leopoldskron's garden, but was later moved to the Hellbrunn Gardens. It's smaller than what it appears in the movie, but that's because a larger replica was built in Hollywood for the scenes, along with the Venetian ballroom, the staircase, and pretty much any interior scene.

The wedding scene was filmed at the beautiful St. Michael's Church in Mondsee, about 30 minutes from the center of Salzburg.

The Real von Trapps

The spell is broken, but the real intrigue begins when I discover some truths about Maria Augusta Kutschera. She was a foster child from Vienna and had a teaching degree when she whimsically wanted to become a nun and joined the Nonnberg Abbey. The strict environment didn't quite suit her, so the nuns were happy to oblige Captain Georg von Trapp's request for a governess and sent Maria off to him and his seven children, as told to us by our official Sound of Music Tour guide, Christina.

The Captain was a decorated World War I hero who had lost his wife, Lady Whitehead, to scarlet fever. Lady Whitehead's family was trying to marry the Captain off to her baroness cousin, but that didn't work out. The Captain, 25 years Maria's senior, married the 22-year old governess in 1927.

Long before Maria joined the family they were musical and enjoyed hiking in the mountains of Salzburg. However, they started performing professionally and became an award-winning musical troupe after Maria and the Captain married.

The Captain was sought after by the Nazis, who came knocking on his front door 11 years later, however the family felt strongly against Adolf Hitler and he declined Hitler's invitation to sing at his birthday. Together, the family decided to leave Austria, but not by climbing over the Alps, which would have geographically placed them in the heart of Nazi territory in Germany. In a less dramatic fashion than depicted in the film, they simply packed their bags and instruments, boarded a train for Italy and traveled around Europe for a bit before sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States and settling in Stowe, Vermont.

The family has carried on its singing tradition teaching music and performing, but they never benefited financially from the success of "The Sound of Music." Maria wasn't business savvy so she never made much money from the family's story.

Maria's eldest son, Johannes von Trapp (they had three children in addition to the Captain's original seven) still lives at the family home in Stowe, Vermont.

Pondering a Classic
My girlfriend sometimes believes the phrase, "Ignorance equals bliss." I am, however, fascinated by the craft and skill of intertwining art and truth to create something that leaves an indelible mark. I wasn't disappointed in unraveling some of the truths behind the fantasy. I won't stop watching it and I'll still be carried away by "The Sound of Music," where the hills are alive as ever.