Stage music for Hassan and His Golden Road to Samarkanda by James Elroy Flecker (1936)
Vocal-instrumental and Vocal Works, Music for Theatre, Work without Opus Number
Manuscript: Unknown
Premiere: Lwów, 6 December 1936 (Gazeta Lwowska 1936, no. 284)
Premiered on 6 December 1936 at Lwów’s Grand Theatre (transl. Adam Szembek, dir. Wacław Radulski, sets by Andrzej Pronaszko, music director: Jakub Mund, Koffler’s most gifted pupil).
Hassan. A Tale of Hassan of Baghdad and How He Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand. A play in five acts (11 scenes). Fragment of a unique copy from the Lwów Theatre Library (Silesian Digital Library)
A reviewer wrote:
Koffler’s music adds an atmospheric background to Flecker’s drama, coming to the foreground in the scene of torture. It is in this scene that it ought to be more dissonant and violent, so that it could emotionally represent the lovers’ torment, or at least justify Hassan’s spiritual reaction, his shock
(Gazeta Lwowska, 10 Dec. 1936, 2).
Another commentator wrote:
For the beautiful play, Józef Koffler wrote highly expressive music – now lyrical and dreamy, Oriental and sensuous, now – ominously seething
(Nasza Opinia, 27 Dec. 1936, 12).