Without movies and television, the people of Paris went to the theatre, and the name piece a grand spectacle (extravaganza) is reserved for plays of the second half of the nineteenth century with huge, colorful, animated sets. The success of these plays was such that some were brought to America in the 1870s and 1880s by the brothers Bolossy and Imre Kiralfy.ib D'Ennery helped make journey Through the Impossible into a piece a grand spectacle-a guarantee of success. journey Through the Impossible played for the first time in Paris, at the Theatre de la Porte Saint-Martin on November 25, 1882. The play was performed 97 times (43 in 1882 and 54 in 1883), which compares well with the 113 performances of The Children of Captain Grant.

By 1882, Jules Verne was a world-renowned writer, thanks to a new genre, the scientific novel. His plays, a goldmine for theatre directors around the world, dramatized some of his novels, fulfilling for him a dream of his youth-to be appreciated as a playwright. In fact, young Verne, from the time of his law studies, dreamt of nothing but the theater. He was introduced into the social circles of Alexandre Dumas pere,17 and managed to have an act performed at the Theatre Historique18 in 1850: The Broken Straws.19 He loved music, mainly opera, and in 1853 he became secretary of the Theatre Lyrique,20 where the most famous French operas of the nineteenth century were created under the signature of Hector Berlioz,21 Charles-Francois Gounod,22 Georges Bizet,23 Adolphe-Charles Adam,24 and others. Before finding his way to the publisher Hetzel and embarking on his monumental work, Extraordinary Voyages, Verne had written several plays, and even after starting his adventure novels, he continued to produce dramas.

But a profound change in the public's taste made Verne seek a new approach. The festive atmosphere of the Second Empire was brutally wiped away by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, by the defeat of France, and by the bloody reprisals following the Paris Commune. In the field of theater, these events transformed theater-goers, who no longer wanted sarcastic opera-bouffe'25 loaded with verve and presupposing a wide culture among spectators who understood a world of fairies and genies. Rather, the Parisian public sought consolation and relief from a grim reality by fleeing into the world of dreams. That meant a return to a simpler form of the old opera-comique,26 a fantasy.

The Parisians wanted amazing spectacles with astonishing machines; certainly Verne's novels could be transformed into wondrous dramas with exotic sets and costumes. The success was striking and fabulous: Around the World in Eighty Days-a lavish production with Indians, Hindus, elephants, serpents, trains, and shipwrecksran for 415 successive performances from November 7, 1874 to December 20, 1875. Encouraged by this success, Verne reissued Children of Captain Grant in 1878 and Michael Strogoff in 1880.

All of these plays were in collaboration with d'Ennery, one of the most prolific drama writers of the nineteenth century. From 1831 to 1887, he presented an enormous number of plays, fantasies, libretti for opera, and other staged performances. At the time of his collaboration with Verne, d'Ennery was at the peak of his fame; he had already written his famous work, The Two Orphans.27 He owned a superb villa in Antibes (on the French Riviera), a dream of a place where Verne went to work several times. (Without the help of the "special effects" magician d'Ennery, Verne later wrote two other plays inspired by his novels-Keraban the Inflexible28 and Mathias Sandoi f 29 -but they were performed only a few times.)

Verne had long pondered the dangers of science. After publication of "Master Zacharius"30 (1854), he seemed to be influenced by Saint- Simonianism,31 a philosophy the Second Empire tacitly adopted, that glorified the engineers, science, and technology that would industrialize France. Furthermore, in no other work by Verne are science fiction and science fantasy so present as in Journey Through the Impossible (1882). With regard to science fiction, even Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and From the Earth to the Moon cannot compete.

Most of Jules Verne's novels until the mid-1880s present science and technology as beneficial to humankind. The scientist uses technology to help heroes out of a difficult situation. Typically, the engineer Cyrus Smith (Mysterious Island 32) drives his companion castaways toward a better life, using his knowledge of chemistry, physics, and natural sciences, restructuring nature with the overriding ingenuity of humans. In Verne's novels of the first part of his life the only villain is Herr Doktor Schultze (The Five Hundred Million of the Begum33), but the character is not Verne's invention. Hetzel bought the manuscript from Paschal Grousset34 (better known by his pseudonym, Andre Laurie) and asked Verne to rewrite it; the book was published as authored by Jules Verne. After the mid-1880s, Verne, in his pessimism, created crazy scientists like Robur (Robin the Conqueror or Master of the World35), Orfanik (The Castle in the Carpathians36), and Thomas Roch (Facing the Flag37). These mad scientists use their knowledge and inventions for destructive purposes. journey Through the Impossible is the hinge between the two halves of Verne's life, being an apotheosis of the first optimistic part, where the play asks the reader and the spectator, continuously, to choose, like George Hatteras, between good and evil, heaven and hell.

From 1872, with "The Doctor Ox,"38 Verne emphasized the danger of too much science, believing that science itself is not to blame; rather, we must look to the use humans make of science. In this short story-a vigorous and compact masterpiece of droll humor and sarcastic farce-a scientist risks a terribly dangerous experiment, even more disquieting because he pretends to provide free gas lighting for the town of Quiquendone, without charging for his scientific knowledge. The tone remains that of the opera-bouffe of the Second Empire; thus, it comes as no surprise that the subject attracted Offen- bach39 in 1877. Peaceful, soft characters engulfed in their own bovine passivity are the foil to the bizarre and mysterious figure of Dr.