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''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 limited three-week workshop production at New York Theatre Workshop in 1994. This same Off-Broadway theatre was also the musical's initial home following its official January 25, 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 ninth longest-running Broadway show at the time (currently tenth after having been passed by Mamma Mia!). The production grossed over $280 million.〔Time Magazine, March 10, 2008 issue, p. 66〕 The success of the show led to several national tours and numerous foreign productions. In 2005 it was adapted into a motion picture featuring most of the original cast members. ==Concept and genesis== In 1988, playwright Billy Aronson wanted to create "a musical based on Puccini's ''La Bohème'', in which the luscious splendor of Puccini's world would be replaced with the coarseness and noise of modern New York." In 1989 Jonathan Larson, a 29-year-old composer, began collaborating with Aronson on this project, and the two composed a few songs together, including "Santa Fe", "Splatter" (later re-worked into the song "Rent"), and "I Should Tell You". Larson suggested setting the play "amid poverty, homelessness, spunky gay life, drag queens and punk" in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, which happened to be down the street from his Greenwich Village apartment. He also came up with the show's ultimate title (a decision that Aronson was unhappy with, at least until Larson pointed out that "rent" also means torn apart). In 1991, he asked Aronson if he could use Aronson's original concept and make ''Rent'' his own. Larson had ambitious expectations for ''Rent''; his ultimate dream was to write a rock opera "to bring musical theater to the MTV generation." Aronson and Larson made an agreement that if the show went to Broadway, Aronson would share in the proceeds.〔 Jonathan Larson focused on composing ''Rent'' in the early 1990s, waiting tables at the Moondance Diner to support himself. Over the course of seven years, Larson wrote hundreds of songs and made many drastic changes to the show, which in its final incarnation contained 42 songs. In the fall of 1992, Larson approached James Nicola, artistic director of New York Theatre Workshop, with a tape and copy of ''Rent's'' script. When ''Rent'' had its first staged reading at New York Theatre Workshop in March 1993, it became evident that, despite its very promising material and moving musical numbers, many structural problems needed to be addressed including its cumbersome length and overly complex plot.〔 As of 1994, the New York Theatre Workshop version of ''Rent'' featured songs that never made it to the final version, such as "You're A Fool", "Voice Mail #4", "Come To The Meeting", "Open Road", the predecessor of "What You Own"; "He Says", "On The Street #1-3", "You'll Get Over It", the predecessor of "Tango: Maureen," featuring Mark and Maureen; "Right Brain", later rewritten as "One Song Glory", featuring Roger; "Do A Little Business", the predecessor of "You'll See," featuring Benny, Mark, Roger, Collins, and Angel; "Female to Female A & B," featuring Maureen and Joanne; and "Real Estate", a number wherein Benny tries to convince Mark to become a real estate agent and drop his filmmaking. This workshop version of ''Rent'' starred Anthony Rapp as Mark and Daphne Rubin-Vega as Mimi. Larson continued to work on ''Rent'', gradually reworking its flaws and staging more workshop productions. On January 24, 1996, after the musical's final dress rehearsal before its off-Broadway opening, Larson had his first (and only) newspaper interview with music critic Anthony Tommasini of ''The New York Times'', attracted by the coincidence that the show was debuting exactly 100 years after Puccini's opera. Larson would not live to see ''Rent's'' success; he died from an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm (believed to have resulted from Marfan syndrome) in the early morning of January 25, 1996. The first preview of ''Rent'' was canceled and instead, friends and family gathered at the theater where the actors performed a sing-through of ''Rent'' in Larson's memory.〔 The show premiered as planned and quickly gained popularity fueled by enthusiastic reviews and the recent death of its composer. It proved extremely successful during its off-Broadway run, selling out all its shows at the 150-seat New York Theater Workshop.〔 Due to such overwhelming popularity and a need for a larger theater, ''Rent'' moved to Broadway's recently remodeled Nederlander Theatre on 41st Street on April 29, 1996.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rent (musical)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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