Rent is a Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, based upon the opera "La Bohème," opening in New York City in 1996. The musical centers around a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive in New York's Alphabet City neighborhood under the shadow of AIDS. (In the opera, the disease was tuberculosis).

The score included the ballads "Seasons of Love," "Rent ," "Light My Candle," "I'll Cover You," "La Vie Boheme" and "Santa Fe." The resulting cast album from the show was the most successful recording of an American musical in almost 30 years.

The musical was conceived by Jonathan Larson, a 35-year-old composer who died from an undiagnosed dissecting aortic aneurysm on January 25, 1996, just nineteen days before the musical made its debut at the New York Theatre Workshop . It is believed that the defect resulted from Marfan syndrome.

The original cast principals, as appeared in the Broadway production and album recording, was as follows:

• Taye Diggs - Benny
• Wilson Jermaine Heredia - Angel
• Jesse L. Martins - Collins
• Idina Menzel - Maureen
• Adam Pascal - Roger
• Anthony Rapp - Mark
• Daphne Rubin-Vega - Mimi
• Fredi Walker - Joanne