Trapp Family Singers in Manitowoc, 1953
Recently, while conducting local historical research on a 1950s reel of newspaper microfilm at the Lester Public Library in Two Rivers, I happened to notice an article on the world famous Trapp Family Singers and their appearance at the Lincoln High School auditorium in Manitowoc. Knowing well the story of Baron Georg and Baroness Maria von Trapp and their children who fled Austria to escape Nazism in 1938 (the inspiration for the musical play and film The Sound of Music), I was quite surprised to learn of the family’s evening performance on Monday, November 30, 1953 in Manitowoc.
According to Roy Valitchka of the Manitowoc Herald-Times on December 1, 1953, “an evening of joyous song was the reward” for those who crowded Lincoln High School auditorium to hear the Trapp Family Singers, America’s favorite musical family. The 90-minute performance was described as “flawless” with “voices that were fresh and true.”
The ensemble included matriarch and mother Maria Augusta Trapp, four daughters (Agathe, Maria Franziska, Johanna and Martina), two sons (Werner and Johannes), plus two friends, Virginia Farri, soprano, and Donald Meissner, tenor, and Msr. Franz Wasner, musical conductor.
The musical selections included a series of four old German dances and the Augelletti che cantate, an aria for soprano from the Italian opera Rinaldo by Georg Handel, with a recorder and viola da gamba (stringed instrument) accompaniment that was especially pleasant. Just before intermission the Trapp family sang three sacred motets with perfect pitch and warm vocal color. A group of Austrian folk songs and Alpine yodeling also found favor with the audience.
The program ended with Christmas carols, which were “beautifully sung” and “touching, ” especially Stille Nacht (Silent Night). Thirteen-year-old Johannes Trapp, the youngest member of the singing family and the only Trapp child born in America, soloed on the recorder as an encore, reproducing the sounds of a bullfinch, canary and linnet (a small Old World finch). Following the concert, a reception for the Trapp Family Singers was held in St. Boniface School Hall.
The concert was sponsored by the Mystical Rose Circle of the Daughters of Isabella. Tickets cost $1.50 and were sold by members and at the Johnson Electric & Radio Shop, 908 Washington Street. The performance in Manitowoc was part of a national concert tour that took the Trapp Family Singers to Emmitsburg, Maryland; Raleigh, North Carolina; Holland, Michigan; and Mansfield, Pennsylvania, among others. Proceeds of the concert were donated to the St. Mary Home for the Aged in Manitowoc and St. Joseph Orphanage, Green Bay.
In case you were wondering, patriarch and Austro-Hungarian Navy officer Georg von Trapp died of lung cancer in 1947. The big-screen version of The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews, was based on the real-life Maria’s 1949 book, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Maria died in 1987 and is buried in the family cemetery at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont.
Next time you catch yourself singing or humming Do-Re-Mi, Climb Ev’ry Mountain, Edelweiss or one of several other songs from the 1965 film The Sound of Music, you may smile a bit knowing these show tunes were written to tell the inspirational story of the Trapp family who once provided an evening of fine entertainment with traditional songs and Christmas carols in Manitowoc 67 years ago.
