This paper describes one of the most important works by Liszt and one of the most revolutionary in the whole literature for the piano – the Sonata in B minor – by way of the ballet Marguerite and Armand by Frederick Ashton.
Ashton created the coreography of the ballet on the basis of the Sonata’s form. The emotional content and the specific musical imagery of the Sonata are connected with a famous dramatic novel: La dame aux camelias by Alexandre Dumas fils.
The ballet was created in 1962 and first performed in 1963 at the Royal Opera House. It consists of a Prologue and four scenes. The first performers were Margot Fonteyn as Marguerite and Rudolf Nureyev as Armand. In the ballet the scenes are not derived from those of the novel, but based on Marguerite’s memories. The author claims that the very musical coreography becames a powerful means for understanding the structure of the music: the gestures of the dancers are strikingly similar in rhythm and in affective content to the music of Liszt.