The longest running Broadway musical of the early 1960s, The Sound of Music marked the last collaboration between composer Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960), just before Hammerstein's death from cancer. Basedpartially on Maria Von Trapp's autobiography, The Trapp Family Singers, and partially on a German film, Die Trapp Familie, the show was written for Mary Martin, who had already appeared as Nellie in Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical South Pacific. Like many other Rodgers and Hammerstein productions, The Sound of Music included a remarkable number of popular songs: "The Sound of Music," "My Favorite Things," "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," "Do-Re-Mi," and "Edelweiss."

The setting for The Sound of Music is Salzburg, Austria, where Maria, a postulant at Nonnberg Abbey, is too free-spirited to accept the discipline of the order easily and frequently escapes to the mountains. Thus, the Mother...