![]() ![]() ![]() University of Maryland (College Park, Md. "Over the Moon": The Creation and Development of Rent by Jonathan Larsonĭigital Repository at the University of Maryland Jonathan Larson, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics, began working on the American rock opera Rent in 1989, when playwright Billy Aronson sought a collaborator for an adaptation of Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème (1896) set in contemporary New York City. My analysis of material from the Larson Collection and the interviews of others involved in Rent's development reveals the story of how this unconventional rock musical made it to the stage, highlighting the importance of vision, but also of revision and collaboration. ![]() In this study, I use the Jonathan Larson Collection, donated to the Library of Congress in 2004, to examine this seminal work and composer by tracing Rent's development and documenting Larson's creative process. The story of Rent has been told and retold in the popular media, but a look at Larson's own drafts, notes, and other personal writings adds another important and largely missing voice - Larson's own. Despite its critical acclaim and commercial success, the hit musical Rent by Jonathan Larson has received scant attention in academic literature. ![]()
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