Rent
Music that moves Puccini's Paris garret to the East Village and, with rock guitars and gospel choruses, counts out a year of loss and love.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The creators ⏳🌊
- ComposerJonathan Larson
He wrote the music, lyrics and book alike, and died on the eve of the first preview, receiving the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award posthumously.
- DirectorMichael Greif
Directed the premiere at New York Theatre Workshop and the Broadway production.
- LeadAnthony Rapp
Played Mark, the narrator and aspiring filmmaker, from the workshop days onward, on stage and on screen.
- LeadAdam Pascal
Played Roger, the guitarist, in the original stage production and in the 2005 film.
- LeadIdina Menzel
Earned a Tony nomination as the performance artist Maureen and played the same role in the film.
- StarringWilson Jermaine Heredia
Won the 1996 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical as Angel.
I. The rent and La Bohème
(Origins) In 1988 the playwright Billy Aronson conceived a musical that would move Puccini’s opera “La Bohème” to contemporary New York. The composer Jonathan Larson joined the following year, and before long Larson took over the project. Aronson was promised credit for the original concept and additional lyrics, along with a share of the profits. The tuberculosis of a 19th-century Parisian garret became the AIDS of the East Village in the late 1980s, and the impoverished poet and painter became an aspiring filmmaker and a rock guitarist. (The composer) Larson was born in 1960 in White Plains, just outside New York. For years he waited tables at a Manhattan diner while writing songs, hoping to bring the pulse of rock into Broadway music. When “Superbia,” his vision of a future society, never reached a full production, he wrote “tick, tick… BOOM!,” a monologue piece about a composer’s anxiety on the eve of turning thirty. “Rent” is the work Larson clung to and rewrote for nearly 7 years. (The title) The English word rent means the money owed for housing, and it is also a past participle meaning torn. Overdue rent and a torn community live together in this one word. (The premiere) After a 1993 staged reading and a 1994 workshop at New York Theatre Workshop, the full production was readied for January 1996. On January 25, the eve of the first preview, Larson died of an aortic dissection at thirty-five. The show opened as scheduled, moved in April to Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and 4 Tony Awards. The Broadway run continued until 2008, for 5,123 performances. (Lineage) The shadow of “La Bohème” also falls across “Moulin Rouge,” covered earlier in this series. And together with “Hedwig,” which opened Off-Broadway 2 years later, this work stands at the center of the current that made rock a language of the musical stage.
II. Christmas Eve in a darkened loft
(The power cut) The story begins on Christmas Eve 1989, in a run-down East Village loft. Mark, a filmmaker, tries to record everything with his camera, while his roommate Roger clings to nothing but his guitar. Roger, who stopped leaving the apartment after losing his girlfriend, is HIV-positive. To this loft, its electricity cut off, comes a notice demanding the overdue rent from Benny — once their friend, now the son-in-law of the family that owns the building. (Tuning) The performance opens with the sound of a guitar being tuned. Mark serves as narrator, speaking directly to the audience, while Roger tries out the same short phrase a few times and stops. Mark teases him that it sounds like Musetta’s Waltz from “La Bohème.” This kind of borrowing from the opera’s melodies becomes a thread running through the entire work. (Fury) In the title song that follows, the cold of the loft and the poverty of the street erupt all at once. Tenants and people of the street layer their voices, and the songs carry even the exposition that might otherwise be left to dialogue. The sung-through form, which carries nearly the whole story in song, reveals itself from the very first number. (A wish) Left alone, Roger sings that before he dies he wants to write just one song that will last. Just then Mimi, a club dancer who lives downstairs, knocks on his door and asks him to light her candle. Puccini’s Mimì and Rodolfo meet over a blown-out candle and a dropped key. What this Mimi drops is a bag of drugs. Following the opera’s scene almost exactly and changing only a single prop, Larson reveals both the distance of a hundred years and the shadow of his own era at once.
The furious title song unleashed together by the tenants and people of the street in a loft without power. It is the first chorus, setting the sound of the entire work.
- Onstage, the sound of Mark and Roger tuning their instruments flows seamlessly into this song. From the outset it shows that song will carry even the dialogue that sets the scene.
- An electric guitar riff (a short, repeated guitar figure) relentlessly circling a brief phrase drives the song. Choosing a small rock band over a string-laden Broadway orchestra is itself the work’s declaration.
- In one passage several characters sing different lyrics at the same time. The counterpoint, stacking independent melodies on top of one another, sounds like the noise of the city.
- In the 2005 film it comes second, after “Seasons of Love,” unfolding in scenes that move between the loft and the street.
A monologue in which Roger, who no longer leaves home, confesses that he wants to write one lasting song before he dies. It is the greatest foreshadowing of the final scene.
- A rock ballad that begins in a low, suppressed register and soars to high notes in the chorus. The rise and fall of the melody traces the very order in which a confined heart breaks open.
- The song was recorded on the original cast album in the voice of Adam Pascal, who originated the role of Roger. Pascal played the role both onstage and in the 2005 film.
- The wish in this song is answered in “Your Eyes” in the final scene. Heard in succession, the two songs make the whole work sound like the story of completing a single song.
The first meeting of Roger and Mimi, who has come to borrow a light for her candle. It moves the meeting scene of Puccini’s Act I to contemporary New York.
- A rapid exchange, half sung and half spoken. It sounds like recitative — the part of an opera sung as if speaking — recast as a rock duet.
- The blown-out candle, the dropped object, the hand groping in the dark — all follow the devices of Act I of “La Bohème.” But the shadow of the era emerges in the fact that what falls is not a key but a bag of drugs.
- Daphne Rubin-Vega in the original stage production and Rosario Dawson in the film both played Mimi, performing the same scene at different temperatures.
III. People met on the street
(Meeting) The same night, Tom Collins, a wandering philosophy professor, is mugged on the street. The one who takes care of him is Angel, a drag performer and street percussionist who drums on plastic buckets. Both are HIV-positive. Angel tells the story of the day’s earnings over a buoyant dance rhythm, and that cheerfulness changes the temperature of the whole group. (The group) Angel and Collins attend a support group for people with AIDS. It is based on Friends in Deed, a group Larson actually attended alongside an HIV-positive friend. In “Will I?” the attendees layer the same question one after another, building it up like a round. The fear of losing one’s dignity does not stay within one person’s monologue; it becomes the question of everyone sitting in that room. (A dream) On the subway, Collins sings about opening a restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Wearing the light gestures of a show tune, the song pictures a place far from New York’s cold and poverty. Then Angel and Collins sing a love duet, promising to shelter and protect each other. It is the tenderest moment in the work. (Crossed paths) Roger and Mimi miss each other. Mimi tempts him with hard-edged rock to go out with her tonight, and Roger answers with a song that pushes her away. As two songs of different genres collide, the hearts of two people drawn to each other yet backing away are laid bare. (Tango) Mark’s former girlfriend Maureen is a performance artist, now seeing a lawyer named Joanne. In “Tango: Maureen,” sung when Mark and Joanne — both at Maureen’s mercy — first meet, a borrowed tango rhythm has the two trade the lead as if wresting it from each other.
A love duet in which Angel and Collins promise to be each other’s coat and roof. It returns in Act II with an entirely different meaning.
- It uses the bouncing rhythms and call-and-response of songs from Motown, the 1960s Detroit soul label. That is why the promise of two people who have nothing sounds all the lighter and more tender.
- At the funeral in Act II the same melody returns as a reprise (a repeat of an earlier song). The slower tempo and gospel-style chorus turn a song of promise into a song of mourning.
- That reprise was led, both onstage and in the film, by Jesse L. Martin as Collins.
- Wilson Jermaine Heredia, as Angel, won the 1996 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and played the same role in the film.
IV. Long live the bohemians
(Protest) On Christmas Eve night, Maureen stages a performance protesting Benny’s plan to clear a vacant lot where a homeless tent encampment stands. The performance ends in an uproar, and the group crowds into the Life Café. It was a real restaurant on the corner of 10th Street and Avenue B, and it closed in 2011. (The list) When Benny mocks their way of life at the café, Mark fires back, and the Act I finale “La Vie Bohème” begins. Mark makes a show of solemnly mourning the death of bohemia, as if celebrating a requiem mass. Soon the whole company is reeling off, without pause, the names of the artists and thinkers, foods and habits they cherish. The passage transposes the Café Momus scene from Act II of Puccini’s opera. The pride of a community that has nothing yet has looked after its own is expressed in the speed of a list pouring out without a breath. (Confession) The celebration halts in the middle. Roger and Mimi learn that they are both HIV-positive and sing “I Should Tell You,” a quiet duet about what they should have said long ago. This is why “La Vie Bohème” is split into A and B in the track listing. By slipping a private confession between boisterous choruses, the scene sets the joy of a community side by side with the fear of one person. (The parting of ways) Act I ends in an exuberant chorus, but from here on, scenes in which the whole group sings and laughs together grow rare. The songs of Act II increasingly split off into pairs, and the broad chorus returns to a different use.
It is the Act I finale, in which the gang loudly celebrates their poor, free lives at the Life Café. Right in the middle of it, Roger and Mimi's confession breaks in.
- It opens with the solemn pretense of a requiem mass, then soon flips into a fast, giddy chorus. Bohemia, having been mocked, turns its own funeral into a festival.
- A list song that endlessly reels off the names of artists and thinkers, foods and habits. The very speed at which the names pile up expresses the community’s pride.
- The track is split into A and B because Roger and Mimi’s quiet duet “I Should Tell You” falls between them. The alternation of uproar and stillness is worth following by ear.
- The passage corresponds to the Café Momus scene in Act II of Puccini’s “La Bohème.” The Life Café where it is set was a real restaurant.
V. How to measure a year
(Reckoning) Act II opens with a number that takes a step back from the plot. The cast stands in a single line at the front of the stage and sings “Seasons of Love,” which asks what we should use to measure the span of a year. A question that begins with numbers finally arrives at its answer: measure it in love. Act II skips through a year, from New Year's to the following Christmas Eve, and this song serves as a preface that looks ahead to that year. (Rupture) As time passes, the couples begin to waver. In “Take Me or Leave Me,” Maureen and Joanne confront each other head-on: accept me as I am, or leave. Roger and Mimi, too, split up over jealousy and drugs. “Without You” repeats a simple melody as it sings of a time of calmly accepting that the world goes on turning without each other. (Loss) Meanwhile, Angel's illness deepens. Angel's passing is rendered in abstraction through a dreamlike number called “Contact.” At the funeral that follows, Collins sings as a reprise the love duet that Collins and Angel had sung together in Act I. The once-buoyant melody slows, a chorus rises beneath it, and the same song turns from a promise into a lament. (Fracture) When the funeral ends, the remaining friends scatter, blaming one another. Roger decides to sell the guitar and leave for Santa Fe. In “Goodbye Love,” as Mimi and Roger turn their backs on each other, the community of Act I all but collapses. In Chris Columbus's 2005 film version, the latter part of this number was cut on the judgment that it piled on too much emotion. The soundtrack does include it.
Stepping briefly away from the plot, this song works like an overture to Act II, asking what we should measure a year by. It is the best-known number in the show.
- The entire cast stands in a single line and sings over a piano accompaniment that repeats the same chord progression. Stepping outside the plot, the song seems to address the audience directly.
- Midway through, a single voice adds gospel-style embellishments in a high register, as if improvised. On the original cast recording of the stage production, ensemble member Gwen Stewart sang this solo.
- The 2005 film moves this number to the very beginning, opening the movie with the eight principals singing on the stage of an empty theater. The solos went to Tracie Thoms as Joanne and Jesse L. Martin as Collins.
- At the end of the 1996 cast album came a newly arranged version featuring Stevie Wonder on vocals and harmonica. The song has since taken on a life of its own, sung often at graduations and memorials.
A duet in which Maureen and Joanne collide head-on, making no attempt to hide their opposing temperaments. It signals that, in Act II, the couples have begun to waver.
- The first half is Maureen's free-spirited singing; the second, Joanne's meticulous, resolute rebuttal. Then, at the end, the two voices shout the same words together. The two of them, at odds and yet alike, can be seen in the very structure of the music.
- It is a head-to-head contest between belters, each pulling a powerful chest voice up into the high notes. It is often cited as one of the great vocal showdowns among musical-theater duets.
- Idina Menzel, as Maureen, earned a Tony nomination for this show, and this stage was where Menzel's career began. Joanne was played by Fredi Walker onstage and by Tracie Thoms on film.
VI. Christmas Eve again
(Owning) Roger in Santa Fe and Mark in New York, far apart, sing the duet “What You Own.” Mark resolves to quit the television job that had been buying the footage and to finish a film of Mark's own. Roger, in a strange land, at last realizes the song that must be written. Two voices from different places reach the same conclusion and merge into one. (Return) A year passes, it is Christmas Eve once more, and the scattered friends return to the loft. What happens in this final scene is better seen for yourself. But what the music does there can be told. (Completion) The tune Roger has kept starting and abandoning after a few bars ever since Act I — the melody Mark teased as sounding like Musetta's Waltz — is at last completed as a song. “Your Eyes,” sung by Roger, is addressed to one person alone and is the simplest, quietest song in the show. The wish voiced in Act I, to write one song that would endure, meets the design of the whole work here. (Today) The finale layers melodies scattered across both acts. A short vow first heard at the support group — to live not for tomorrow but for today — returns as a chorus for the whole gang. Words that began as one person's fear end as a song of the community. (Afterglow) Larson never lived to see this production. And so Roger's song, the wish to leave behind one lasting song, can sound to audiences like the composer's own voice. The songs Larson left have since been sung again countless times on stage, on film, and in school productions.
A duet in which Mark in New York and Roger in Santa Fe, far apart, each search for an answer of their own. The two voices converge into one and lead into the final scene.
- Over a driving hard-rock rhythm, the two trade lines one by one. In effect, two different places are layered into a single space on the stage.
- A song that asks about the distance between what you own and what you have sold off, between documenting life and living it. It is in this number that Mark resolves to stop filming other people's pain and selling it.
- Anthony Rapp as Mark and Adam Pascal as Roger played the same roles both in the original stage production and in the 2005 film. The way their voices interlock sounds born of that long partnership.
Lesser-known stories
On January 21 and 23, 1996, just days before dying, Larson went twice to the emergency room with chest pain and dizziness. Cabrini Medical Center and St. Vincent's Medical Center both diagnosed a gastrointestinal ailment and sent Larson home. That year, after a four-month investigation, the New York State Department of Health concluded that both hospitals had misdiagnosed the case and fined them $10,000 and $6,000 respectively. The department itself described the penalty as unusual. Overshadowed by the show's success story, the episode has mostly survived only as a footnote. Several of the attendees' names in the support-group scene are the names of Larson's real friends who died of AIDS. The script encourages companies that later stage the show to replace them with the names of people their own communities have lost. And so the scene is sung with slightly different names at each production, becoming, on every stage, a memorial for that place. On hearing of Larson's death, the Library of Congress decided to acquire Larson's papers. After an archivist hired by the family had first finished organizing them, some 5,000 items entered the library in 2004. Among them, the materials for “Rent,” “Superbia,” and “tick, tick… BOOM!” are especially abundant. A 2007 dissertation at the University of Maryland drew on these drafts and notes to trace how the work changed over 7 years. Such a process, hard to grasp from the finished work alone, has been read mostly among scholars. To this day, the production credits still list Billy Aronson for the original concept and additional lyrics. Though obscured by the way the work is remembered solely as the posthumous creation of a lone genius, this story began from the very start with another writer's idea.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Sung-through
(Literal meaning) The English sung-through means sung (sung) all the way from beginning to end (through). (In film·musical theater music) A musical form that carries most of the story in song, with almost no scenes handed off to spoken dialogue. In “Rent,” apart from brief lines of dialogue and the voicemail scenes, nearly every scene unfolds in song. Imagine playing a game with a friend in which, for a whole day, you exchange every conversation only in song. Greetings would have to be sung, and so would talk about homework. A sung-through musical is a performance that keeps up that game for more than two hours.
Reprise
(Literal meaning) The French reprise means to take up again (re), to start over. (In film·musical theater music) Singing a song heard earlier once more later in the show. Usually the tempo, the lyrics, or the singer changes, revealing how the situation has shifted in the meantime. In “Rent,” Angel and Collins's buoyant love song returns at the Act II funeral as a slow song of mourning. A cheer you sang with gusto on field day while your team was winning sounds entirely different, though it is the same song, when you sing it again slowly after losing. That is exactly the effect a reprise aims for. (Elsewhere) In fencing, the word names an immediate renewed attack after the first one has been parried.
Belting
(Literal meaning) The English belt out is an everyday expression meaning to sing something out loud and strong. (In film·musical theater music) A singing technique that carries the chest resonance of the speaking voice straight up into the high notes and sings with power. Unlike the clear, rounded head voice of classical singing, it has a force and directness as if the speaking voice itself had become song, and it is widely used in musicals and rock. Think of the voice you use when you tighten your stomach and shout to a friend at the far end of the playground. Belting is holding that sound out at length, on pitch. (Elsewhere) A belt ordinarily means the strap worn around the waist.
Riff
(In film·musical theater music) In rock or jazz, a short phrase repeated by the guitar or bass to form the backbone of a song. People sometimes remember the riff before the song's title. In “Rent,” the title song is driven from start to finish by an electric guitar riff. When you start a video game, the same stretch of background music loops over and over, and after only a few hearings those few bars lodge in your ear. A riff, too, becomes a song's face through repetition in just this way.
Quotation (musical quotation)
(Literal meaning) Inyong (引用) means 'drawing in and using': to draw in (引) and use (用) what belongs to someone else. (In film·musical theater music) A technique of deliberately borrowing part of the melody of another composer's work or a well-known song and placing it inside a new piece. When listeners recognize the original, the meanings of the two works overlap. In “Rent,” the tune Roger keeps starting and abandoning recalls Musetta's Waltz from Puccini's opera “La Bohème,” and this melody threads the whole work together. It is like quoting a famous sentence in your own writing to deepen its meaning. It is also like mimicking a movie line popular among your friends, so that everyone pictures the same scene at once.
Round (canon)
(Literal meaning) Canon comes from the Greek kanōn, meaning a measuring rod or rule. The name comes from following the previous voice's melody by a fixed rule. (In film·musical theater music) A form in which one person begins a melody, the next enters a little later with the same melody, and the voices pile up layer upon layer. In “Will I?” from “Rent,” the support-group attendees take up the same question one after another, and one person's fear grows into a question shared by many. If you have ever sung “Let's All Go Round the Neighborhood” in music class, each group starting a measure later than the last, you have already sung a canon. (Elsewhere) In religion, canon means the scriptures officially recognized as authoritative, and among fans it refers to the settings officially established by the original work.
Counterpoint
(Literal meaning) Daewibeop (對位法) means 'a method (法) of placing (位) note against (對) note.' It renders the Latin punctus contra punctum, 'point against point' — that is, note against note. (In film·musical theater music) A compositional technique that sounds two or more independent melodies at once while weaving them to fit together. In musicals it is often used when several characters sing different lyrics and tunes simultaneously, letting a scene of crossed thoughts be heard all at once. It is like a choral competition in which the sopranos sing the main melody and the altos an entirely different tune, yet heard together they make one song.