How a cringing Austria came to embrace ‘The Sound of Music'

The Age

07-06-2025

The film draws more than 350,000 tourists a year, pumping millions into hotels, bus tours, strudel stands and gift shops stocked with marionette goats. It's estimated to contribute well over €1 billion ($1.8 billion) to the regional economy.
But the city's conversion from reluctant star to musical mecca didn't happen overnight. It has had to find a balance between preserving its baroque dignity and leaning into the twirling optimism that has defined it for generations of visitors.
On a walking tour through the Old Town, I follow Igor, a whip-smart guide with a dry wit and a bottomless well of trivia. As we pass the fountain in Residenzplatz, where Maria sang I Have Confidence, he hits his stride.
'At this point,' he says, pausing for effect, 'I must tell you something important. We do not eat schnitzel with noodles, this is not Austria.' He shrugs. 'And please no French fries. You have it with erdapfelsalat [potato salad].'
Julie Andrews, who turns 90 this year, remains the brightest star to shine over Salzburg. Her Maria didn't just conquer the von Trapps – she conquered the world.
Still, Salzburg isn't only Maria's city. Mozart, of course, still looms – his birthplace lovingly preserved, his likeness on everything from chocolates to shampoo. He may have composed more than 600 works and changed music forever, but in the battle for Salzburg's most requested soundtrack, Edelweiss is giving Eine kleine Nachtmusik a real run.
On the Sound of Music official coach tour, our guide 'Big Dave' – a gruff but rather camp Englishman – points to the Alps.
'Those mountains they climb at the end?' he says. 'They lead to Germany, not Switzerland. You wouldn't go that way.' He chuckles. 'Not unless you were mad … or Maria.'
The group, a mix of Americans, Brits, Koreans, Australians and Indians, laughs in unison. One of them starts singing Sixteen Going on Seventeen. Another joins in. It's off-key, unfiltered, unhinged and completely perfect.
We end up in Mondsee – a quaint, pastel-painted village a short drive from Salzburg, where the film's iconic wedding scene was shot. The Basilica of St Michael, where Maria walked down the aisle in her satin gown, is every bit as grand in real life.
Across the square, I wander into a gift shop and give in completely. I buy a marionette goat – a nod to The Lonely Goatherd, obviously – a Julie Andrews postcard and an original copy of The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, Maria von Trapp's autobiography. The book is more religious and rugged than the film, but somehow just as inspiring. The real Maria was steel wrapped in sincerity.
That afternoon, in Salzburg's famed Marionette Theatre, I watch the entire story play out with tiny wooden figures. It shouldn't work – and yet it does. There's something fragile and beautiful about seeing strings lift these little characters skyward as they sing of confidence, courage and farewell.
The puppets take their final bow. I quietly wipe a tear.
The next day by the famous lake where Maria and the children fell out of the boat, I meet Peter Husty, chief curator at the Salzburg Museum.
He tells me a new museum will open near Hellbrunn Palace next year, just steps from where the famous gazebo, in which Liesl and Rolf serenaded each other, now stands.
'There have been ideas for a museum for 25 years,' he says. 'But we're official and serious – we're not a private, commercial thing. It's not going to be an excuse for a gift shop.'
The museum aims to tell two stories: the Hollywood legend, and the Austrian reality.
'People come for Julie Andrews, but they often don't know there was a real Maria von Trapp,' he explains. 'The family's story is a mirror of 20th-century Austrian history – monarchy, war, loss and emigration.'
Husty has spent years buying and begging from extensive private collections, including global film posters, soundtracks and rare memorabilia.
'We won't make it a cinema – we'll tell stories, show objects, backstage photos. It's a cultural history.'
For Husty, the film's impact is still striking.
'Every time I see a group rush to the gazebo, singing, I say it's like a pilgrimage,' he laughs.
When he curated the first local exhibition of the film in 2011, he even changed the carillon in Mozart Square to play Edelweiss. Tourists looked up, singing. Salzburgers called the museum asking, 'What the hell is that music?'
And that, really, is the point. The Sound of Music has never been about historical accuracy. It's about the refusal to be cynical. It believes that music can heal, that family can triumph, and that confidence can be sung into being.
Today, in a world spinning faster and more frantically than ever, The Sound of Music remains a gentle act of resistance. It reminds us that optimism isn't naive. It's necessary.
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And Salzburg, after all these years, has come to understand that being the backdrop to a myth – even one dressed in curtain fabric – can be a privilege. Especially when that myth still makes people sing, weep and twirl.
As I leave, the bells of the cathedral ring out across the cobbled streets. I think of Julie. And I think maybe – just maybe – the beginning is still a very good place to start.