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Transcript

The Sound of Music

NH Spring Production

Context

Events Leading to World War II (European Conflict)

Events Leading to World War II (European Conflict)

January 30, 1933 - Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany (in hopes that his parternship with the president would strengthen Germany's government and their relationship with citizens)

March 23, 1933 - Parliaments gives legislative power to Hitler

June 30, 1934 - The Night of Long Knives - 80 of Hitler's political opponents were arrested and shot without a trial

August 2, 1934 - President Von Hindenburg dies and the presidential power is handed over to Hitler. This is where the term Führer comes into play.

September 15, 1935 - The Nuremburg Race Laws were decreed.

February 10, 1936 - The Gestapo was placed above the law.

March 12, 1938 - Germany announced a "union" with Austria (the annexing of Austria)

Anschluss

Anschluss

  • A united Austria and Germany that would form a "Greater Germany" (this was forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles, among other documents)
  • Earlier, Nazi Germany had provided support for the Austrian National Socialist Party (Austrian Nazi Party) in its bid to seize power from Austria's Fatherland Front government.
  • When the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler (an Austrian-German by birth), rose to power, the Austrian government withdrew from economic ties. Austria shared the economic turbulence of the Great Depression, with a high unemployment rate, and unstable commerce and industry. During the 1920s it was a target for German investment capital.
  • By 1937 rapid German rearmament increased Berlin's interest in annexing Austria, rich in raw materials and labor. It supplied Germany with magnesium and the products of the iron, textile and machine industries. It had gold and foreign currency reserves, many unemployed skilled workers, hundreds of idle factories, and large potential hydroelectric resources.
  • Ultimately, after a rollercoaster of political events, Hitler and his armies marched peacefully into Austria on the morning of March 12, 1938 and effectively took Austria as part of Germany.

The Real

Von Trapp Family

  • The Sound of Music is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.
  • 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, a suburb of Salzburg.
  • He wrote to the Nonnberg Abbey in 1926 asking for a nun to help tutor his sick daughter, and the Mother Abbess sent Maria. His wife had died in 1922.
  • The real Maria and Georg married at the Nonnberg Abbey in 1927.
  • Lindsay and Crouse (the playwrights) 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 von Trapps spent some years in Austria after Maria and the Captain married and was offered a commission in 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. 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.

Plot Synopsis

Show Requirements

Locations and Time

THE SOUND OF MUSIC takes place in Austria, early in 1938.

SPECIFIC LOCATIONS

Nonnberg Abbey

Mountainside near the Abbey

The Office of the Mother Abbess

A Corridor in the Abbey

The Living Room of the Trapp Villa

Outside the Trapp Villa

Maria's Bedroom

The Terrace of the Trapp Villa

A Hallway in the Trapp Villa

A Cloister Overlooking the Chapel

The Concert Hall

The Garden of Nonnberg Alley

About the Characters (from the Playwright)

Maria Rainer

A young, orphaned Nonnberg Abbey postulant whose impetuous behavior calls her fitness for the veil into question, Maria is dispatched by the Mother Abbess on a probationary tour of duty as governess to the seven children of the widowed Captain Georg von Trapp. Initially cowed by the Captain's autocratic manner, she holds her own with him, wins over his children, restores music to his house, and discovers, to her distress, that he has fallen in love with her and she with him. Retreating to the Abbey, she is sent back to the von Trapp villa by the Mother Abbess, in order to find "how God wants you to spend your love." That turns out to be as a wife to the captain, a second mother to his offspring, and a pathfinder who helps lead them out of the peril looming over them.

Captain Georg von Trapp

A decorated naval hero of the First World War, adamantly opposed to the Nazis and their designs on his beloved Austria. Traumatized by the loss of his wife, he has distanced himself from his home and the music which once animated it. The arrival of the postulant Maria Rainer as a governess breaks open his shell, bringing him back to his children and music. Marrying her, he gains a stalwart, resourceful partner in his daring decision to flee with his family from the dictates of the Third Reich, to freedom.

The Mother Abbess

Spiritual head of Nonnberg Abbey, mentor to Maria. Her credo: "You have to find the life you were born to live." She shepherds Maria from a mistaken vocation as a nun to a true one as a wife and mother, finally helping her to escape, with her new family, over the mountain where both she and Maria grew up.

Max Detweiler

A charming, well-connected impresario, he is a confidant of the Captain's lover, Elsa Schraeder, and apparently, like her, a moral chameleon. His collaboration with the regime in Berlin threatens his friendship with the Captain, but in the end he risks everything to save the von Trapps.

Elsa Schraeder

A chic, attractive Viennese widow, president of her late husband's corporation, now involved in a relationship with Captain von Trapp. Her expectations of marrying the Captain founder on her willingness to accept the Nazis, a moral pliancy that is anathema to him.

Elsa Schraeder

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