Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

The time a 13-year-old Julie Andrews sang the national anthem for King George VI.  Picture: YouTube / British Pathé By Sian Moore, ClassicFM London   Remembering Julie Andrews’ days as a child star, with the time she sang a typically elegant rendition of the national anthem as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth watched on. Her grace and unique musicality are unmatched to this day. But did you know just how long Dame  Julie Andrews  has been performing under the spotlight? In an unearthed  video  from British Pathé, an archive of newsreels and documentaries, we can see one of the  singer ’s earliest performances, at the age of just 13. Standing on the great stage of the London Palladium, for the Royal Command Performance in 1948, the young soprano began to sing. Her performance, which took place before King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, made her the youngest solo performer ever to participate in a Royal Variety Performance. Even at such a young age, it...

Real-life Maria Von Trapp teaches Julie Andrews how to yodel.  Picture: The Julie Andrews Hour/The Sound of Music Blu-Ray/YouTube By Maddy Shaw Roberts   How do you solve a problem like Maria? Well, how about a yodelling lesson, for starters… In 1965,  Julie Andrews  yodelled her way into all our hearts with her portrayal of Maria Von Trapp, governess to the seven  Von Trapp children  in  The Sound of Music. And it turns out, Andrews really got to meet the real Maria Von Trapp whose family’s story – somewhat loosely – inspired the hit film. In one scene, Maria helps the children put on a puppet show, and sings along to ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ (that’s the one that goes ‘High on a hill was a lonely goatherd, lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo’) as they perform. But according to real-life Maria, well, “There is yodelling, and then there’s…  yodelling .” During an episode of  The Julie Andrews Hour , a television variety series which ran for one sea...

Julie Andrews on losing her voice after an operation... Julie Andrews lost her voice after an operation.  Picture: PA By Maddy Shaw Roberts, ClassicFM London 0 After having vocal surgery to remove ‘nodules’, Julie Andrews was left with permanent damage that destroyed her four-octave soprano voice. Julie Andrews , the 84-year-old soprano and  musical theatre  legend, has opened up about the 1997 operation that caused her to lose her singing voice, saying: ‘I went into a depression’. “When I woke up from an operation to remove a cyst on my vocal cord, my singing voice was gone,” she told  AARP The Magazine  for their October/November 2019 issue. “I went into a depression. It felt like I’d lost my identity.” Andrews, who won an Academy Award for her starring role in  Mary Poppins  (1964), first noticed her voice was hoarse during a Broadway show in 1997. Shortly after, she had surgery to remove...