Rent (musical)

Rent is a rock musical with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson loosely based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create a life in New York City's East Village in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS.

The musical was first seen in a workshop production at New York Theatre Workshop in 1993. This same Off-Broadway theatre was also the musical's initial home following its official 1996 opening. The show's creator, Jonathan Larson, died suddenly of an aortic dissection, believed to have been caused by undiagnosed Marfan syndrome, the night before the Off-Broadway premiere. The show won a Pulitzer Prize, and the production was a hit. The musical moved to Broadway's larger Nederlander Theatre on April 29, 1996.

On Broadway, Rent gained critical acclaim and won a Tony Award for Best Musical among other awards. The Broadway production closed on September 7, 2008 after a 12-year run of 5,123 performances, the eleventh longest-running Broadway show. The production grossed over $280 million.

Rent

Rent may refer to:

Musical

Musical may refer to:

See also

The Musical (TV series)

The Musical (Hangul: 더 뮤지컬) is a 2011 South Korean television series starring Ku Hye-sun, Choi Daniel, Park Ki-woong, Ock Joo-hyun and Kim Eun-se. It aired on SBS from September 2 to December 23, 2011 on Fridays at 22:00 for 15 episodes.

Filming began in July 2010, and the series was pre-produced before airing. One of the location shoots took place in Broadway, New York City.

Synopsis

The series follows the lives of people in the world of musical theatre, showing the passion and dreams among the producers, songwriters and actors during a musical production. Go Eun-bi is a medical student who loves musicals, and her dream is to be a professional musical theatre actress. Hong Jae-yi was once one of the best composers in Korea, but he quit musical theatre and left the country after his girlfriend, musical theatre diva Bae Kang-hee broke up with him and married another man. When Jae-yi returns to Korea, he accidentally meets Eun-bi and decides to help her achieve her dream. Jae-yi believes that Eun-bi will become a better actress than Kang-hee, and thus their love triangle begins.

Seasons of Love

"Seasons of Love" is a song from the Broadway musical Rent, written and composed by Jonathan Larson. The song starts with an ostinato piano motif, which provides the harmonic framework for the cast to sing "Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes" (the number of minutes in a normal calendar year). The main instruments used throughout the song are piano, vocals, guitar, organ, bass and drums.

The song is performed by the entire cast in the musical and in the 2005 film of the same name. The lyrics ask what the proper way is to quantify the value of a year in human life, concluding in the chorus that the most effective means is to "measure in love". Since four of the lead characters either have HIV or AIDS, the song is often associated with World AIDS Day and AIDS awareness month.

Songwriter

Jonathan Larson actually intended for Seasons of Love to be performed symbolically as a song at Angel's funeral. When Larson died the night before the preview opening of the show, the cast sang it at the beginning to pay their respects to the composer. It is performed at the beginning of the second act, referencing recent past events or the events to come. The song is heard twice throughout the second act (once as the opener, before A Happy New Year and the reprise is heard after "Take Me Or Leave Me," before "Without You") before hearing it in its last incarnation as background to I'll Cover You: Reprise and Angel's eulogy.