03.01.2012                      08.Tewet. 5772

Musikszene:

The Sound of Music, now in Hebrew, just as irresistible as the original

A new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'The Sound of Music' is just the right side of kitsch.

"The Sound of Music" is considered one of the most popular musicals of all time, in great part thanks to the 1965 film starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. Andrews was reprising the role of a singing governess, having played the eponymous Mary Poppins on film just the year before.
Andrews' radiant personality and equally radiant voice – and the fact that a group of children with voices like angels are at the heart of the musical – have etched in the collective memory Richard Rodgers' highly melodic songs, like "The Sound of Music," "Do-Re-Mi" and "Edelweiss" (no, this is not an Austrian folksong ). These have also sidelined almost completely the fact that the musical's plot, based on a true story, takes place in Austria at the time of the Anschluss in 1938, and that nearly the whole story develops in the shadow of the Nazi annexation (though in the plot there's nary a Jew in sight )….