JONATHAN
LARSON
The
unlucky landlord of "Rent" died the night his smash Broadway musical was
born in 1996.Following the musical's final dress rehearsal, Broadway’s Great White Hope for the American musical unexpectedly perished in his apartment of an aortic aneurysm at the age of 35. Theater's wonderkind reworked Puccini’s immortal opera "La Boheme" into a modern masterwork about edgy East Village artists fending off the multiple scourges of AIDS, drug addiction, homelessness, selling out, and losing faith.
The infectious rock rhythms and joyous lyrics that would first take Manhattan, and then the world, earned its deceased creator a Pulitzer Prize, four Tony Awards (including Best Musical), six Drama Desk Awards, and three Obie Awards.
Before "Rent," Larson was a struggling young composer who dreamed of reviving the lost art of the Broadway musical for a generation raised on rock and MTV. After studying acting at Adelphi University, Larson moved to New York City to make a career in theater. His was no overnight success, however -- he supported himself by working in a cafe, while grabbing writing and acting jobs on the side. Oddly, his pre-"Rent" commercial success came mostly from the children's entertainment industry: besides penning tunes for television's "Sesame Street," he also wrote four original songs for a children's video called "Away We Go." In between these jobs, Larson worked on "Rent," which remained in development a full seven years before its first opening.
Though he had received recognition for earlier works such as "tick...tick...BOOM!" and "Superbia," Larson’s gift for pop was only fully lauded with his last, greatest work.
Like the romantic, reckless young artists that inhabited his imagination, Larson lived his dream: to escape the monochromatic life of suburbia and create "just one song... to leave behind."
