Vienna wakes up to the Sound of Music
BY EMSIE Ferreira
VIENNA (AFP) - Since the sixties everybody has known "The Sound of
Music", except Austrians, but 100 years after Maria von Trapp was born
here the musical finally premiered in Vienna at the weekend and scored a
hit.
The 1965 film in which Julie Andrews immortalised the
singing nun from Salzburg was not shown on Austrian national television
until the mid-1990s, though for people elsewhere it had become Austrian
folklore.
"Foreigners think 'Edelweiss' is Austria's national
anthem and Austrians don't know the song," Gerald Stocker, a spokesman
for Vienna's Volksoper where the musical opened on Saturday night, told
AFP.
The director of the popular opera house, Richard Berger,
says the reasons why the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical never caught on
in the country where it is set, are political and psychological.
"Austrians have a tendency to dislike things they don't
know, if there is a slight resistance, the reason is usually this, and
the subject is quite tough on Austria."
He is referring to the Von Trapps' forced departure from
Austria in 1938 because of the baron's resistance to Nazi rule, with
which most of the population collaborated.
"As soon as 1938 happens, the situation is not very kind
to the Baron and the Baroness Von Trapp. They have to flee. They did not
leave because they suddenly no longer liked the hills," he told AFP.
Berger said it was "not an accident that we are staging
it in 2005," which marks the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II
and the 50th anniversary of the signing of the State Treaty which ended
the post-war Allied occupation of Austria.
Both anniversaries are being marked with celebrations
carefully planned by the ruling coalition between the conservatives and
the far-right.
But political observers say when Chancellor Wolfgang
Schuessel recently told Austrians it was a time for introspection, he
was asking them to reflect on their prosperity and re-elect him in 2006,
rather than do soul-searching about the country's fascist past.
January marked the first time the parliament paid honour
to Austrians who resisted Nazi rule, prompting academics to remind the
country that they were but a handful.
The production, directed by Canadian Renaud Doucet, does
not shy away from the facts.
A huge swastika was projected onto the stage, and the
Nazi officers who suddenly come marching down the isles of the theatre
are portrayed as fearsome and stupid - "pigs" as they are called by
Baron von Trapp.
But the audience, some of whom wore tradional dirndl
dresses to the show, were hardly thrown off their stride and fell in
love with the story and the sentimental, catchy songs, sung here in
German.
They forgave pop singer Sandra Pires, in the role of
Maria, her small voice and gave her the same rapturous applause as the
seven children in the production, chosen from 600 hopefuls.
"It was lovely. We don't usually see it here, it is for
foreigners, which is a pity," said Beatriz Spiegelfeld, a Viennese
mother of five.
"I loved the children. The bit about the Anschluss?
Well, it is part of our history," said Konrad Loibl, a shopowner in
Vienna.
He said he had travelled to Linz and Sankt Poelten to
see earlier, smaller productions of the musical, perhaps giving credence
to Berger's theory that "there must be secret 'Sound of Music' fanclubs
in Austria, they have just not been outed."
At the premiere on Saturday night the musical with its
wholesomeness and gemuetlichkeit happily winning out over any hidden
angst, seemed perfectly at home in Austria.
The local daily Der Standard on Monday wrote that it was
surely the historical details that so long kept "The Sound of Music"
from Austria but said these were handled with little complexity.
It hailed the musical as "old-school, irritation free"
fare for the Volksoper, the poorer cousin of the city's famous State
Opera created in 1904, where it is a part of the centenary celebrations
programme. |
