Carrie Underwood to Star as Maria von Trapp on TV's The Sound of Music

TV Watch

By Stephen M. Silverman

11/30/2012 at 10:55 AM EST

Julie Andrews, as Maria von Trapp in 1965s Best Picture of the Year, The Sound of Music, with Carrie Underwood (inset)

Everett; Inset: Taylor Hill/WireImage

It sounds like mighty big gulp for a relative novice, but Carrie Underwood has been signed to play arguably the most-beloved nanny in the history of entertainment – in the most beloved musical of all time.

Country-singing fourth season American Idol winner, 29, will play Maria von Trapp in next year's live TV broadcast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music , it was announced Friday.

"Speaking for everyone at NBC, we couldn't be happier to have the gifted Carrie Underwood take up the mantle of the great Maria von Trapp," said Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment, which plans to air the three-hour show (based on the original Broadway version) sometime around the holiday season a year from now.

"She was an iconic woman who will now be played by an iconic artist," Greenblatt said in a statement, referring to von Trapp – who was first immortalized on Broadway in 1960 by Mary Martin, then in the Oscar-winning 1965 Best Picture of the Year by Julie Andrews.

Underwood's previous acting credits were roles on TV's How I Met Your Mother, as the love interest of Ted (Josh Radnor), and, in her film debut last year, as a church leader in Soul Surfer , a coolly-received feature about real-life shark victim Bethany Hamilton.

No word yet on who'll play the dashing captain with the whistle.