The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music - it's a classic theater piece. Even non-theater people know and love this show. That's largely due to the movie - which is shown on TV at least twice a year.

Now the play and the movie are not exactly the same, and neither is completely historicly accurate - we'll go into historical inaccuracies some other time perhaps. But certain songs from the film are not in the show - and some of the songs from the play are not in the movie.

The Sound of Music is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Many songs from the musical have become standards, including the title song ("The Sound of Music"), "Edelweiss", "My Favorite Things", "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" and "Do-Re-Mi".

The original Broadway production, starring Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel, opened in November 1959, and the show has enjoyed numerous productions and revivals since then. It has also been made into an Academy Award-winning 1965 film musical. The Sound of Music was the final musical written by Rodgers and Hammerstein; Hammerstein died of cancer nine months after the Broadway premiere.