About the work
“Die Reise von der Erde zum Mond” is a stage adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel “De la Terre à la Lune” (“From the Earth to the Moon”), which first appeared as a serial in the Journal des Débats in 1865 and was published as a book by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in October of the same year. Verne continued the story of the moon voyage in 1870 with “Autour de la Lune” (“Around the Moon”). The stage version by Agnieszka Jabłońska, billed as a space-travel satire after Verne’s novels, opens at Theater Chemnitz on 2 October 2026.
Plot
After the end of the American Civil War, the Baltimore Gun Club under its president Impey Barbicane looks for a new challenge and resolves to fire a projectile to the Moon from a giant cannon. Despite wagers and press campaigns by his rival Captain Nicholl, the Columbiad cannon is cast in Florida. The Frenchman Michel Ardan insists on travelling inside the projectile and reconciles the opponents; finally Barbicane, Nicholl and Ardan are launched together – but observers discover that the projectile has missed the Moon and is orbiting it.
Cultural significance
The novel is regarded as an early work of science fiction and anticipates details of the moon landings about a century later, such as the launch from Florida; at the same time Verne mocks the cannon enthusiasm of his era. It inspired Jacques Offenbach’s “Le voyage dans la lune” (1875) and Georges Méliès’ film “A Trip to the Moon” (1902); in 1969 the crew of Apollo 11 explicitly referred to Verne’s book on their return flight.