'Memories Before and After The Sound of Music'

Agathe von Trapp tells what it was really like to be part of a world-famous family singing troupe.

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My on-again, off-again tour of global literature has arrived in Austria, a country I first learned about through the 1965 film “The Sound of Music.”

My mother loved the movie, so we always watched it when it aired during the holiday season. In between, we listened to the soundtrack, one of the few records we owned. Then, when I was in ninth grade, my school announced that the spring musical would be “The Sound of Music.” My best friend and I auditioned and were cast as nuns; she got to be Sister Margaretta, and I was Third Sister From the Left in the Back Row. Years later, we had the opportunity to visit Salzburg together, and of course we danced around a garden featured in the film, loudly and not very melodically singing “My Favorite Things.”

So when I saw that an actual von Trapp had written an autobiography, “Memories Before and After The Sound of Music,” I couldn’t resist reading it.

I know: The von Trapps, who moved in elite circles in two countries, Austria (Captain von Trapp) and England (his first wife, Agathe Whitehead), weren’t representative of Austrian citizenry. Still, Agathe von Trapp provides a fun, detailed glimpse into life with her family. She is generous with amusing anecdotes, such as the time Captain von Trapp, who was fond of camping, inadvertently got half of his family stranded on an island for several days, incommunicado. She recounts fondly the hours they spent singing together, a pastime they enjoyed long before Maria arrived on the scene.

She seizes the opportunity to debunk some of the movie’s other creative flights. For instance, the family didn’t escape the Nazis by climbing every mountain. Their only exertion was to walk out their back door and to a nearby train station. That wouldn’t have been as much fun to film, though.

That dramatic ending also obscured the hardships the family experienced after fleeing Austria and arriving penniless in the United States. They turned to touring, a livelihood that was tough on all of them. Years later, as they operated the Trapp Family Resort in Vermont, they endured first a fire that burned the place to the ground and then a family feud over control of the 2,200-acres resort.

Von Trapp does take pains to express her appreciation for the movie that made her family so famous (she mentions becoming close with Charmian Carr, the actress who played Liesl, the character based on Agathe von Trapp). And she is clearly grateful for all of the fans who’ve helped her family’s story, and that of the Austria they knew and loved, endure.