Culture Finder
March 1999 |
Not since 1954, when Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim collaborated
to produce the Romeo and Juliet-inspired West Side Story has Broadway seen a
more successful modern day riff on a classic than Rent, Jonathan Larson's smash
Broadway update of Giacommo Puccini's La Boheme. Critics differ about the artistic
merits of Rent, but there is no doubt that the show, now in its third year on
Broadway, is a bona fide pop culture phenomenon, and a true Broadway classic. It is as
much a product of the peculiar pop culture of the 1990's as the proto "rock
musical" Hair was of the 1960s, and it has inspired a kind of fanaticism --
among the legions of "Rent-heads" who return to see the show tens, in some cases
even hundreds, of times -- the likes of which American musical theater has never before
witnessed.
La Boheme was,
in its own time, a ground-breaking sensation. Though audiences immediately responded to
the opera's tunefulness and simple, affecting melodrama, critics derided Boheme for
its "homely" subject matter. Based on Henri Murger's 1849 novel Scenes de la
vie de Boheme, Puccini's opera followed the economic and romantic travails of
garret-dwelling Parisian bohemians, a subject thought to be beneath the grandeur of opera.
Of course, the critics eventually came around. Today Boheme is recognized
universally as a masterpiece and is, with Bizet's Carmen, perhaps the most popular
opera of all-time, performed to delighted audiences the world around, year after year.
Here are some more
background facts, "statistics" and information about La Boheme and Rent.
| L A B O H E
M E |
R E N T |
| First
Performance |
| Turin,
Italy, 1896 |
New York City,
October 29, 1994 |
| About the
Composer |
| Giacomo Puccini was
a rising star in the Italian opera world when he composed La Boheme, his fourth
opera, at the age of 38. He revered Giuseppe Verdi, and a was declared by none other than
George Bernard Shaw to be the heir to Verdi’s legacy. He would go on after Boheme
to compose such masterpieces as Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot. |
Jonathan Larson
was 33 years old when Rent, his project of several years and his first major
musical, premiered off-Broadway. Larson was an admirer and protegee of Stephen Sondheim.
Larson died of an aortic aneurysm on January 25, 1996, at age 35, on the eve of Rent’s
first preview at the distinguished New York Theatre Workshop. |
| Setting |
Mimi, a seamstress
Rodolfo, a poet
Marcello, a painter
Colline, a philosopher
Schannard, a musician
Musetta, a coquette
Benny, the landlord |
Mimi, a junkie
Roger, a rock musician (and former junkie)
Mark, a flimmaker
Tom Collins, a philospher
Angel Dumont Schunard, a drag queen
Maureen, a lesbian performance artist
Joanne, Maureen’s activist lover
Benny, a yuppie landlord |
| Bohemians’
Neighborhood Gathering Place |
| Café Momus, rue d’Enfer |
Life Café,
10th Street and Avenue B |
| Show-Stopping
Songs |
| "Che Gelida Manina";
"Si, Mi Chiamano Mimi"; "O Soave Fanciulla"; "Quando M'en
Vo" ("Musetta's Waltz") |
"Rent";
"One Song Glory"; "I’ll Cover You"; "La Vie Boheme";
"Seasons of Love"; "Tango: Maureen" |
| Distinguishing
Headress |
| Berets |
Air-traffic
controller-style microphone headsets |
| Enter
The Heroine |
"They call me Mimi
But my name is Lucia
They call me Mimi
My story is brief: I embroider linen or silk, at home or outside.
I am contented and happy
And it's my pleasure
To make roses and lilies
I love those things which possess such sweet enchantment
Which speak of love and springtime
Of dreams and visions
Those things that people call poetic" |
"They
call me Mimi...
They say I have the best ass below 14th St." |
|