Post by Misaru on May 23, 2007 18:51:05 GMT -5
Rent is an American Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning rock musical, with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson. After previews that began on January 26, 1996, it opened in New York City on February 13, 1996, at the New York Theatre Workshop before moving to Broadway, opening at the Nederlander Theatre on April 29, 1996. Based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème, the musical centers on a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York's Alphabet City in the last days of the Boheminan East Village, under the shadow of AIDS.
Rent was one of the first Broadway musicals to clearly feature gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgender characters. It is also noted for its ethnically diverse cast, which includes many racial minorities in its ensemble and leading roles. Rent is considered revolutionary for bringing controversial topics and counterculture to a traditionally conservative medium, and is credited with increasing the popularity of musical theater in the younger generation. Many critics have also mentioned how the show speaks to Generation X the same way that the musical Hair spoke to the baby boomers or those who grew up in the 1960s, calling it "a rock opera for our time, a Hair for the 90s."
The cast album from the show was the most successful recording of an American musical in almost 30 years, featuring both a double-disc "complete recording" collection with a remixed version of the song "Seasons of Love" featuring Stevie Wonder[5] and a single-disc "best of" highlights.
Rent has been enormously successful on Broadway, enjoying both critical acclaim and word-of-mouth popularity. The Original Broadway Cast reunited at the Nederlander Theatre on April 24, 2006, to stage a performance for the rock opera's tenth anniversary. With more than 4,000 performances and still running, it is the seventh-longest-running Broadway show. It is set to become the second-longest-running musical currently on Broadway when Beauty and the Beast ends its run on July 29, 2007. It is still eight years behind The Phantom of the Opera, the longest-running musical in Broadway history, which is still running.
In 2005, the rock opera was also adapted into a full-length motion picture, which features most of the original cast members. Certain plot elements were changed slightly. More noticeably, some of the songs were changed to spoken dialogue, so the movie version is more of a musical film than rock opera.
Rent was one of the first Broadway musicals to clearly feature gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgender characters. It is also noted for its ethnically diverse cast, which includes many racial minorities in its ensemble and leading roles. Rent is considered revolutionary for bringing controversial topics and counterculture to a traditionally conservative medium, and is credited with increasing the popularity of musical theater in the younger generation. Many critics have also mentioned how the show speaks to Generation X the same way that the musical Hair spoke to the baby boomers or those who grew up in the 1960s, calling it "a rock opera for our time, a Hair for the 90s."
The cast album from the show was the most successful recording of an American musical in almost 30 years, featuring both a double-disc "complete recording" collection with a remixed version of the song "Seasons of Love" featuring Stevie Wonder[5] and a single-disc "best of" highlights.
Rent has been enormously successful on Broadway, enjoying both critical acclaim and word-of-mouth popularity. The Original Broadway Cast reunited at the Nederlander Theatre on April 24, 2006, to stage a performance for the rock opera's tenth anniversary. With more than 4,000 performances and still running, it is the seventh-longest-running Broadway show. It is set to become the second-longest-running musical currently on Broadway when Beauty and the Beast ends its run on July 29, 2007. It is still eight years behind The Phantom of the Opera, the longest-running musical in Broadway history, which is still running.
In 2005, the rock opera was also adapted into a full-length motion picture, which features most of the original cast members. Certain plot elements were changed slightly. More noticeably, some of the songs were changed to spoken dialogue, so the movie version is more of a musical film than rock opera.