Home / Archives / From the Earth to the Moon

From the Earth to the Moon

This theatrical concert dramatizes the face-to face meeting between the French writer Jules Verne and the young American journalist Nelly Bly, who stopped on her trip around the world to meet the aging and infirm author. Bly’s voyage was intended to simulate Verne’s own Around the World in 80 Days. Although Verne was limited by physical ailments, he was able to bring to life the unsuspected new worlds that populated his mind. Verne and Bly were linked by a common belief in the unbounded powers of human imagination and the possibilities of a completely visionary future.

Film clips from Georges Méliès’ Le voyage dans la lune merges with French and American chamber music in a multimedia production that illustrates the wonder and excitement pervading the intellectual imagination at the beginning of the 20th century.

From the Earth to the Moon was part of our 2007-2008 Season.

2007-2008 Season

Imaginings

Ensemble for the Romantic Century celebrated its seventh season by embarking on a revealing journey through the imaginations of four writers. Delving into a broad spectrum of the Romantic sensibility, each of the four concerts presented a highly individual vision of an imaginary life, from the sublimation of reality into poetry and fiction to a visionary voyage to the outer limits of space. The concerts contemplated the myriad facets of human fantasy and creativity, of our desire to transcend reality by constructing alternative narratives, and of our belief in the limitless potential of the human mind.