Watch Latin American Music Awards
The last surviving member of the seven original Trapp Family Singers made famous in “The Sound of Music” died this week at her home in Vermont. Maria von Trapp, the second-oldest daughter of Austrian Naval Capt. Georg Von Trapp and his first wife and portrayed as Louisa in the musical, was 99.
Von Trapp’s half-brother, Johannes von Trapp, says that she died on Tuesday. He called her a “lovely woman who was one of the few truly good people.”
The family won acclaim throughout Europe for their singing and escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938. Their story was turned into the film and Broadway musical based loosely on a 1949 book by Capt. Von Trapp’s second wife, the matriarch of the family also named Maria von Trapp and portrayed by Julie Andrews in the film version, who died in 1987.
The family moved to Vermont in 1942 after visiting during a singing tour and vacationing in Stowe. The family opened and still operates a lodge there.
(pictured, 1965’s “The Sound of Music”)
