When Larson was a child, he was taken to see a children's version of La Boheme, Giacomo Puccini's opera about a group of struggling young artists, or "Bohemians." From that seed, the idea that would become Rent slowly germinated over the next two decades. Still another influence lay even further in the musical past. Sondheim, who wrote the lyrics for Bernstein's West Side Story (1957) and composed the musicals including A Little Night Music (1973) and the Pulitzer Prizewinning Sunday in the Park with George (1984), would eventually become Larson's mentor. Still earlier, he had enjoyed the Beatles and the Who's Pete Townsend, the latter known for his rock opera Tommy that would have an impact on Larson's later work.īut Larson also appreciated composers Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, whose work would not normally be found among the typical American teenager's favorites. As a teen, his influences had included the Police and the artist who at that time went by the name of Prince. Later in life, he had come to appreciate Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, he said, along with fellow "alternative" musician Liz Phair. In an interview with John Istel for American Theatre shortly before his death, Larson named several musical figures who had been important influences on him. The latter told McDonnell and Silberger: "I was changing his diaper, so he had to be pretty young, and he started singing 'Yellow Bird.' In tune." Larson was raised in White Plains, New York, and enjoyed what Entertainment Weekly called an "idyllic Jewish middle-class childhood." Music was important to him from the beginning, according to his father. Larson's "gift for direct, compelling, colloquial lyrical statement, " Lahr wrote, "seems to prove that the show tune can once again become pertinent and popular." Singing in His Diapers
John Lahr in the New Yorker, while noting that Larson was far from the first composer to attempt the marriage of rock and the Broadway musical, noted that he may have been the first to succeed. But Larson would not be there to accept his awards: on January 25, 1996, the young playwright and composer died of an aortic aneurysm.Įvelyn McDonnell and Katherine Silberger, authors of the text that accompanied the libretto of Rent in a 1997 book published by Morrow, summed up this ironic alignment of events by noting that "it's hard not to think of this story, ultimately, as a tragedy." Yet Larson, who had supported himself as a waiter for the ten years prior to Rent's first production, left an enormous legacy. The show moved to Broadway on April 29, and later that year it would win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as two Antoinette Perry ("Tony") Awards. In February of 1996, the musical Rent, created by Jonathan Larson (1961-1996) and billed as "The Rock Opera of the Nineties, " opened in New York City.
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