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The RENT Connection
Jonathan Larson based his Broadway musical Rent on Puccini’s La bohème. He transplanted characters, plot, concepts, and some details from the 1896 opera to the 1996 musical.
Puccini based La bohème on a set of short stories by Henry Murger called Scènes de la vie de bohème. Murger based his stories on his own sentimentalized Bohemian background. Puccini may have shaped the characters after his own reminiscences, still setting them in the Latin Quarter of Paris. A hundred years later, Jonathan Larson transplanted the Bohemian concept to New York’s Lower East Side, where his own Bohemian lifestyle included working as a waiter to support his beginning theatrical career. Each author wrote about a lifestyle that he knew and loved. And they did have a lot in common.
 Larson’s characters know Puccini’s La bohème: near the end of the first act, Mark tells the crowd, “Roger will attempt to write a bittersweet, evocative song…that doesn’t remind us of ‘Musetta’s Waltz.’”
While Larson’s characters are proud to live “La vie bohème,” they don’t otherwise acknowledge the similarities of their names and parallels of their stories to the opera.
La bohème: Rodolfo, Marcello, Schaunard, and Colline share a garret apartment and try to trick their landlord, Benoit, out of the rent.
RENT: Roger and Mark share an apartment and struggle to pay the rent. Their friends Angel Schunard and Tom Collins hang out with them. Their landlord, Benny, would like to sell the building and start a multimedia studio.
La bohème: Schaunard is a musician, and in the first act he appears with a story of being hired by a wealthy Englishman to play until the Englishman’s parrot died.
RENT: The same, except that Angel Schunard is a transvestite street drummer, and a wealthy woman in a limousine hires him to drum until her neighbor’s yappy Akita jumps out a window. Later, that neighbor turns out to be Benny.
La bohème: La bohème starts on Christmas Eve.
RENT: The same. Rent also ends on Christmas Eve.
La bohème: Mimì is a quiet seamstress who knocks at the door in Act I seeking a light for her candle. She drops her key. Rodolfo pockets the key and takes her hand and sings about it (the hand). They fall in love. Her first aria starts, “They call me Mimì.”
RENT: The same, except that Mimì is a street-smart exotic dancer and heroin addict. Instead of dropping her key, she drops her stash. And she doesn’t say she’s called Mimì until the end of her first song.
La bohème: Marcello and Musetta are a scrappy couple, continually fighting and reuniting. Musetta picks up a rich, pompous, temporary boyfriend named Alcindoro in Act II, and sings the flirtatious “Musetta’s Waltz” about how men find her irresistible.
RENT: Mark’s girlfriend, Maureen, leaves him for a lawyer named Joanne. Maureen also sings about how “everybody stares” at her. Unlike La bohème, Maureen ends up with Joanne.
La bohème: Rodolfo wants to break up with Mimì because he thinks his poverty is bad for her illness.
RENT: Roger wants to leave Mimì because he doesn’t want to be heartbroken when she dies from her drug addiction and AIDS.
La bohème: During the time of separation, Rodolfo and Marcello sing a duet about how much they miss their beloved Mimì and Musetta.
RENT: When Maureen is late for a sound check, Mark and Joanne sing “Tango: Maureen” about how irresistible Maureen is.
La bohème: There are two contrasting couples among the characters: the quiet, totally-in-love Rodolfo and Mimì, and the louder Marcello and Musetta.
RENT: There are three couples: Angel and Collins become a major secondary plot. Also, Maureen leaves Mark uncoupled when she goes to Joanne, and Mark and Joanne become confidants.
La bohème: Mimì dies, presumably of tuberculosis.
RENT: Approximately half the characters are HIV-positive. Angel dies of AIDS. Mimì seems about to die at the end, of AIDS compounded by heroin and poverty.
La bohème: Rodolfo and Mimì agree to stay together until springtime; Mimì loves to embroider designs of spring flowers.
RENT: Roger and Mimì sing “Without you,” about spring and the passage of time.
La bohème: Just before Mimì dies, she says she feels revived.
RENT: Just as Mimì is about to die, she actually does revive.
La bohème: Seconds before Mimì dies, her friends are still trying to find money for medicine.
RENT: As Mimì seems to be dying, Mark says, “We can buy some wood and something to eat.” The music plays “Musetta’s Waltz.”
La bohème: Reviewer William Mann wrote in 1983, “It is the custom-built opera for young lovers, music that insists on another hand to hold.”
RENT: The movie version is rated PG-13 for drugs, sexuality, and strong language.
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