History Theatre / TheSoundOfMusic

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Hearing that von Trapp was a naval captain confuses some modern viewers, considering that he lives in a country that, at present, has no coastline. The thing is, before the end of World War One and the Treaty of Versailles taking a lot of territory away from [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic the Austro-Hungarian Empire]], Austria ''was'' connected to the sea (the Adriatic, specifically), and had a small but well-trained navy with cutting-edge equipment and ships.

* AdvertisingByAssociation: Early trailers for the movie reminded patrons of Julie Andrews' then-recent acclaim for ''Film/MaryPoppins''.

** Mother Reverend takes her title seriously. The tone which she uses indicates she is ''very'' protective of the nuns.

* VillainousValor: Georg received wartime medals for bravery, which he earned by fighting for the Germans in World War I.

[[caption-width-right:350:The ''hills'' are '''''alive'''''.....]]

-->--'''Maria'''

----

** Louisa is the Brawn, being the most active in the outdoors scenes and playing with a football with her brothers.

** Rather than fleeing from the Nazis in the dead of night and hiking over the mountains, the Captain used the fact that he was born in a part of modern-day Croatia which was occupied by Italy to finagle Italian citizenship for himself and, by extension, his family. Then they simply got on a train to Italy and never came back -- although Hitler did order the Austrian borders to be closed literally the ''day'' after they got out.

* AdaptationalAttractiveness: The real Maria and Georg von Trapp were both less conventionally good looking than Creator/JulieAndrews and Creator/ChristopherPlummer, or than most performers who play the roles onstage. Allegedly, the real Maria even told Christopher Plummer that he was handsomer than her late husband had been.

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Downplayed. Captain von Trapp isn't a bad person by any means, but he's depicted as much sterner and more emotionally distant than he was in reality. The real von Trapp children were reportedly disturbed by how their father was portrayed and asked producers to soften him a bit. Maria von Trapp also said that the film got her and Georg's parenting roles reversed; he was the permissive free spirit, who encouraged the children to roam the lands around their house, and she the rule-enforcing disciplinarian.

* GracefulLoser: The Baroness, eventually. One can scarcely blame her for putting up a fight for her love, she's been working on Georg for a long time now. In the musical, however, she gives up the fight for a different reason, in that she and Georg disagree on how to handle the oncoming invasion of Nazis into their country. She is graceful, but the scene where she breaks their engagement is quite heartbreaking.

* AdaptationNameChange: The musical gives Maria Kutschera her own mother's maiden name, Rainer, presumably because it is simpler for an English-speaking audience. All of the children are given different first names (especially [[OneSteveLimit Maria]]).

* AdaptedOut: from Maria's autobiography, lots of characters but notably Father Wasner, family friend and HonoraryUncle, who teaches the family religious classical music, and escapes with the Von Trapp family to America.
** Also Georg's friend who keeps house for him until he can find a wife - which is understandable given that she is a Baroness and so (in the film version) is Georg's fiancee, so two Baronesses in one plot could become confusing.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Hearing that von Trapp was a naval captain confuses some modern viewers, considering that he lives in a country that, at present, has no coastline. The thing is, before the end of World War One and the Treaty of Versailles taking a lot of territory away from [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic the Austro-Hungarian Empire]], Austria ''' ''was'' ''' connected to the sea (the Adriatic, specifically), and had a small but well-trained navy with cutting-edge equipment and ships.
* AmbiguouslyGay: Some productions present Uncle Max as such.

--> "She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee\\
Her dress has got a tear\\
She waltzes on her way to Mass\\
And whistles on the stair\\
And underneath her wimple\\
She has curlers in her hair\\
I even heard her singing in the abbey"

*** In the very next scene, Mother Superior explains that only postulants are prohibited from singing in the abbey. These are full nuns.

* {{Bowdlerize}}: The French dub removed the renditions of "Maria" and "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" sung by the nuns as they thought it was sinful for nuns to be singing non-religious songs. As such, only the reprisals of them were heard. The subtitles don't show the lyrics to them, either. This is a downplayed instance of the trope, as only TV broadcasts were affected. The Home Video releases have these two songs dubbed.

''The Sound of Music'' is the final -- and most famous -- musical composed by Creator/RodgersAndHammerstein (the latter of whom died of stomach cancer just nine months after its Broadway premiere), based on the story of ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_the_Trapp_Family_Singers the Trapp Family Singers]]''. The musical was inspired by the earlier, now largely forgotten 1956 German movie adaptation ''Die Trapp-Familie'' (''The Trapp Family'')[[note]]Largely forgotten except in German-speaking Europe, where it is more highly regarded than ''The Sound of Music''.[[/note]] of the book and was made into a movie in 1965, with Creator/JulieAndrews as Maria and Creator/ChristopherPlummer as the Captain. In 1991, the book was again independently adapted in [[Anime/TrappFamilyStory a 40 episode anime]] as part of the ''Anime/WorldMasterpieceTheater'' series. A live broadcast of the original stage production starring Music/CarrieUnderwood and [[Series/TrueBlood Stephen Moyer]] aired on Creator/{{NBC}} in 2013, the first live television presentation of a musical since ''Theatre/CinderellaRodgersAndHammerstein'' in 1957. Creator/{{ITV}} followed suit in 2015 with its own live broadcast, starring Kara Tointon and West End stalwart Julian Ovenden.

* DrillSergeantNasty: Captain von Trapp treats his children this way at the beginning.

* FaceHeelTurn: Liesl's boyfriend Rolfe pulls a Face-[[{{Pun}} Heil]] Turn at the end when he joins the Third Reich.

-->'''Captain von Trapp:''' You'll never be one of them.\\

* FearOfThunder: All the Von Trapp kids, prompting Maria to sing "My Favorite Things". (She sings ''The Lonely Goatherd'' in the stage play.)

''The Sound of Music'' is the final -- and most famous -- musical composed by Creator/RodgersAndHammerstein (the latter of whom died of stomach cancer just nine months after its Broadway premiere), based on the story of ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_the_Trapp_Family_Singers the Trapp Family Singers]]''. The musical was inspired by the earlier, now largely forgotten German movie adaptation (''Die Trapp-Familie'' (''The Trapp Family'')[[note]]Largely forgotten except in German-speaking Europe, where it is more highly regarded than ''The Sound of Music''.[[/note]] of the book and was made into a movie in 1965, with Creator/JulieAndrews as Maria and Creator/ChristopherPlummer as the Captain. In 1991, the book was again independently adapted in [[Anime/TrappFamilyStory a 40 episode anime]] as part of the ''Anime/WorldMasterpieceTheater'' series. A live broadcast of the original stage production starring Music/CarrieUnderwood and [[Series/TrueBlood Stephen Moyer]] aired on Creator/{{NBC}} in 2013, the first live television presentation of a musical since ''Theatre/CinderellaRodgersAndHammerstein'' in 1957. Creator/{{ITV}} followed suit in 2015 with its own live broadcast, starring Kara Tointon and West End stalwart Julian Ovenden.

''The Sound of Music'' is the final -- and most famous -- musical composed by Creator/RodgersAndHammerstein (the latter of whom died of stomach cancer just nine months after its Broadway premiere), based on the story of ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_the_Trapp_Family_Singers the Trapp Family Singers]]''. The musical was inspired by an earlier, now largely forgotten German movie adaptation of the book and was made into a movie in 1965, with Creator/JulieAndrews as Maria and Creator/ChristopherPlummer as the Captain. In 1991, the book was again independently adapted in [[Anime/TrappFamilyStory a 40 episode anime]] as part of the ''Anime/WorldMasterpieceTheater'' series. A live broadcast of the original stage production starring Music/CarrieUnderwood and [[Series/TrueBlood Stephen Moyer]] aired on Creator/{{NBC}} in 2013, the first live television presentation of a musical since ''Theatre/CinderellaRodgersAndHammerstein'' in 1957. Creator/{{ITV}} followed suit in 2015 with its own live broadcast, starring Kara Tointon and West End stalwart Julian Ovenden.

* FaceHeelTurn: Liesl's boyfriend Rolfe does this at the end when he joins the Third Reich. In the movie, he threatens to shoot the von Trapps when he catches them trying to escape, but the Captain confiscates the gun [[TemptingFate and then says]]:

** Louisa is the Brawn, being the most active in the outdoors scenes and playing with a football with her brothe

** Louisa is the Brawn, being the most active in the outdoors scenes and playing with a football with her brothers.
* BerserkButton: Captain von Trapp manages to control his temper when confronting Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, but when the otherwise inoffensive Max expresses a blasé "what's going to happen is going to happen; just make sure it doesn't happen to ''you''." attitude about the impending Anschluss, the Captain becomes '''furious'''.

* AdaptedOut: from Maria's autobiography, lots of characters but notably Father Wasner, family friend and HonoraryUncle, who teaches the family religious classical music, and escapes with the Von Trapp family to America. ** Also Georg's friend who keeps house for him until he can find a wife - which is understandable given that she is a Baroness and so (in the film version) is Georg's fiancee, so two Baronesses in one plot could become confusing.

* Adapted Out: from Maria's autobiography, lots of characters but notably Father Wasner, family friend and HonoraryUncle, who teaches the family religious classical music, and escapes with the Von Trapp family to America.

* GuessWhoImMarrying: Captain Von Trapp and the Baroness in the eyes of the children.

** In reality, Georg and Maria were married in 1927, Maria only really grew to love Georg romantically ''after'' they had married. While she did like him well enough as her employer, she was pressured by the Church into accepting his proposal and giving up her dream of being a nun, and married him for the sake of the children more than anything else. However, she had borne three more kids by the time they left, and she later reflected that "I learned to love him more than I had ever loved before or after."

** The 'Von Trapp Family Singers' started because the family was ''badly'' in need of money after most of their fortune was lost due to an Austrian banking collapse in 1935; they were encouraged to take part in the 1936 Salzburg Festival, and after winning a prize they went on to perform and tour throughout Europe. They had actually just gotten back from a tour in America when they had to leave Austria permanently.