Editing The Sound of Music (section)

==History==
After viewing ''[[The Trapp Family]]'', a 1956 [[West German]] film about the [[Trapp family]], and its 1958 sequel (''[[The Trapp Family in America]]''), stage director [[Vincent J. Donehue]] thought that the project would be perfect for his friend [[Mary Martin]]; Broadway producers [[Leland Hayward]] and Richard Halliday (Martin's husband) agreed.<ref>Nolan, 244</ref> The producers originally envisioned a non-musical play that would be written by [[Lindsay and Crouse]] and that would feature songs from the repertoire of the Trapp Family Singers. Then they decided to add an original song or two, perhaps by [[Rodgers and Hammerstein]]. But it was soon agreed that the project should feature all new songs and be a musical rather than a play.<ref name="Rodgers">{{cite web|url= http://www.rnh.com/show/95/The-Sound-of-Music|access-date= May 19, 2011|title= The Sound of Music :: Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization :: Show Details|publisher= The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization|url-status= live|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110521083954/http://www.rnh.com/show/95/The-Sound-of-Music|archive-date= May 21, 2011|df= mdy-all}} (Show History section)</ref>

Details of the history of the von Trapp family were altered for the musical. The real [[Georg von Trapp]] did live with his family in a villa in [[Aigen (Salzburg city district)|Aigen]], a suburb of [[Salzburg]]. He wrote to the [[Nonnberg Abbey]] in 1926 asking for a nun to help tutor his sick daughter, and the [[Virgilia, Mother Abbess|Mother Abbess]] sent [[Maria von Trapp|Maria]]. His wife, [[Agathe Whitehead]], had died in 1922. The real Maria and Georg married at the Nonnberg Abbey in 1927. Lindsay and Crouse altered the story so that Maria was governess to all of the children, whose names and ages were changed, as was Maria's original surname (the show used "Rainer" instead of "Kutschera"). The von Trapps spent some years in Austria after Maria and the Captain married and he was offered a commission in [[kriegsmarine|Germany's navy]]. Since von Trapp opposed the Nazis by that time, the family left Austria after the ''[[Anschluss]]'', going by train to [[Italy]] and then traveling on to London and the United States.<ref name="nara">Gearin, Joan. [https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/winter/von-trapps.html ''Movie vs. Reality: The Real Story of the von Trapp Family''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629040126/http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/winter/von-trapps.html |date=June 29, 2011 }}, ''[[Prologue (magazine)|Prologue]]'' magazine, Winter 2005, Vol. 37, No. 4, [[National Archives and Records Administration]]</ref> To make the story more dramatic, Lindsay and Crouse had the family, soon after Maria's and the Captain's wedding, escape over the mountains to Switzerland on foot.