La Boheme RENT act 1 (part1)

Ok, I have to start off by telling some great news! As the majority of the opera web people know Joyce DiDonato has started a project called Joyce and Me so that her fans can help her produce her 10^th year anniversary double CD with her record company. As I am a good fan girl when she gave the fans the first task I was quick to get on there to leave my opinion. She wanted suggestions for the CD name, immediately what came to my mind was ReJoyce, simply because it’s perfect! But a lot of other people also suggested that one and it was indeed the name that ended up winning the competition with 47% of the votes! And as Joyce is a terrific human being, in the video she thanked EVERYONE who had send the ReJoyce suggestion, first of all my friend Sydney, then Jamie and Aksel and most surprisingly ME! Yes, she said my name in one of her fantastic videos, it’s there for all the world to see. She mispronounced my last name but WHO CARES? Everyone mispronounces my last name anyways! So I’m really happy and YAY!

So, as I promised long ago I should probably post my La Boheme RENT project, first act, because it’s really really long so, here we go!

Both pieces begin in the same place, the old apartment Marcello/Mark and Rodolfo/Roger share. The similarities begin to appear from that point on, in both cinematographic productions of both pieces the apartments look very much alike. One room apartments, big windows, a lot of old furniture and disorganization and dirt in general.



Image from La Boheme's 2008 movie



Image from the 2004 RENT movie



Both first scenes are set in the same date in time of year, Christmas Eve, showing that even on festive times the life of some people is quite miserable. While in La Boheme Marcello, the painter, paints a picture of the Red Sea, in RENT Mark starts filming his new documentary film. Both characters work with visual arts and try and show through it how the world really is. That is more evident in Mark’s work since he’s making a documentary about the life of the people who live in Alphabet City (that could easily be a correspondent of the Latin Quarter from La Boheme in Paris, where artists lived in the end of the 19^th century, a place also infested with poverty). But Marcello himself in his first line shows a bit of rebellion towards a government figure when he says “Per vendicarmi, affogo un Faraon!” (And so to avenge myself, I’ll drown a Pharaoh)

Now Rodolfo is more reflective about things, just like Roger he can’t seem to do his art, they both seem hollow without much to live for. It is really one of those frightfully cold December days and since Rodolfo and Marcello don’t have money for firewood to keep themselves warm. Something very similar happens in RENT since all of a sudden they lose power and are consequently without heating. In La Boheme Marcello and Rodolfo decide to burn Rodolfo’s play, act by act to warm themselves and agree not to burn the paintings since they leave an awful smell when burnt. But Mark’s creations are not spared from the firewood in RENT and he and Roger burn his screenplays as well as Roger’s old posters from when he was famous.



Exerpt from the La Boheme libretto (Rip it! Now light it! Rodolfo sets fire to part of the manuscript, then they both pull up their chairs, sit down and warm themselves in the voluptuous heat)

Exerpt from RENT's opening number "RENT"



Image from La Boheme's 2008 movie



Image from the 2004 RENT movie, featuring Adam Pascal as Roger (left) and Anthony Rapp as Mark (right)



While Rodolfo’s play burns, Colline, a philosopher, arrives and we learn at this very moment that it is indeed Christmas Eve in Colline’s line “In giorno di vigília non si accettano pegni!” (No one will accept pledges, on the day of Christmas Eve!). In RENT Collins makes it to the building door but is attacked by robbers who steal his coat and beat him up. And because of that Collins and Angel actually meet and she helps him get on his feet. Collins and Angel would be the equivalent of Colline and Schaunard, the philosopher and the musician. But unlike in La Boheme, where these characters know each other and are friends, in RENT this is their first encounter who fall in love at first sight.

And so the characteristics of one character of La Boheme start going to more than one character in RENT. Collins and Angel represent one side of Rodolfo and Mimi’s relationship, the tender and loving side. And what is more interesting, and at the time of RENT’s premiere polemic, is that the musical shows that a homosexual couple can have a normal relationship just like any other couple. Moreover that the beautiful side of one of the most famous couples in opera history can be revitalized in a same sex couple.

Back to the story, after the total destruction of Rodolfo’s play, Schaunard, the musician, arrives. And he does so filled with food, firewood, wine and cigarettes. He then tells how he was able to buy all those things, an English lord was in need of a musician and Schaunard presented himself thinking he would be giving music lessons. But the Lord actually wanted him to play until his parrot died, and so he played for 3 whole days and the animal was still alive. But he was lucky to get into the maid’s good graces, she prepared a paste with poison and after giving it to the animal it finally died. In RENT the story repeats itself, since a millionaire from Manhattan makes a deal with Angel that if she played her drums until her neighbor’s dog died she’d be more than well remunerated. And so after an hour of incessant drumming the dog finally gives in and throws itself off the twenty third floor.

Exerpt from the La Boheme libretto (...An English Lord...Lord...Milord, or whatever, wanted a musician...Me? I fly to present myself. He takes me on, I ask him... ...when should we start our lessons?..."Right now old chap!"... "Look!" he says and he points to a parrot on the first floor, then adds:"until the parrot dies you go on playing."... And that's what happened: I played for three long days...I'm a good looking fellow so I exercised my charm and won the maid's affection. ..I prepared a parsley mix... Lorito spread his wings out, Lorito opened up his beak; I fed him my parsley mix. And then like Socrates, he died!)

Exerpt from the song "Today for You, Tomorrow for Me" from RENT 

Wow, I’m really tired, I’m gonna make it a day and post the second part from the first act later. I’m not really in a very Boheme vibe; I can’t actually stop listening to Eugene Onegin, very different stuff haha

La Boheme RENT

Oh my world it’s been more than a week that I haven’t posted. But this is just like when I wrote the Vesselina Kasarova posts and had such a wonderful response from everybody and then didn’t know if I could write something as good as that. So I’d like to start off by saying a huge thank you to everybody who read, commented, send me messages, it was really such a terrific surprise. Because I really thought no one would bother to read it because it was so long.

Well anyways, my life is completely upside down, everything is happening at the same time. I’m moving, which is wonderful but so stressful, having tests in college, that is just stressful really, trying to go to the gym and eat well plus studying like crazy.

As some of you know I’m getting my minor degree in music this year, and here in Brasil it’s a requirement to write a thesis on something that is connected to your course. Since I spend the majority of my course focusing on musical theatre but in the last year changed to opera I thought it fit to write about something that embraced both. And as I was going through my intense opera education program I couldn’t help but notice how the musical RENT is so much like La Boheme. The stories are basically the same, so I decided I would write about that. So that was my thesis La Boheme and RENT.

And since I was quite pleased with the result I decided to translate it (yes, because it’s in Portuguese for obvious reasons) and post it here. But I’m not gonna post the whole thing at once, since it’s a pretty big text; let’s just see how it goes shall we? So first there’s a very brief introduction to get everybody on the same page in regards to, what is RENT and what is La Boheme and then we go to the thesis itself.

The purpose of this thesis is to compare the pieces “La Boheme” by Giacomo Puccini and “RENT” by Jonathan Larson from a story point of view, pointing out its differences and similarities from the most apparent to the hidden ones. For such a study the librettos from both pieces were used as well as videos from many different productions of both.



La Boheme is an opera in four acts by the composer Giacomo Puccini with its libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa which is based on “Scènes de La vie de bohème” by Henri Murger. Puccini composed La Boheme in the middle of his career, he had already written operas of great success like Manon Lescaut, Edgard and Le Villi. But La Boheme was his first big piece. It had its premiere on the 1^st of February 1896 in the Teatro Regio in Turin, Italy. The story from the book from which the opera was based in is actually a compilation of stories about artists who lived in the Latin Quarter in Paris around the 1840s. But it could be said that the libretto of La Boheme had many episodes that were inspired by Puccini’s own early years living as a young artist in Milan.

The opera was a huge success in Italy and soon all the major opera houses in Europe had done their production of La Boheme. The opera itself is considered today one of the most important pieces from the romantic operatic repertoire, plus having its leading couple be one of the most famous and iconic romantic pairs in the whole of opera history.

 In La Boheme, the leading characters are the poet Rodolfo and the seamstress Mimi who fall in love in their first encounter, but their relationship is haunted by Rodolfo’s incontrollable jealousy and by Mimi’s tuberculosis. Rodolfo lives with the painter Marcello in a small studio apartment. There are also two more artists in the story, the philosopher Colline and the musician Schaunard who are also very poor and go through extreme situations especially in the winter time. And finally Musetta who is a singer and who was Marcello’s lover but as she has a free spirit and does not like to feel committed to anyone she dumped him to be with a wealthy older man.

Exactly 100 years after the premiere of La Boheme, in 1996 in New York City the musical RENT had its opening night. The musical is officially inspired in La Boheme and goes about the same subjects as the opera, love, sickness and the life of artists in a big urban center. Jonathan Larson, the composer, worked eight solid years in writing RENT until its Off Broadway premiere, he wrote more than 100 songs during that time for RENT alone. He wanted to show how even after a hundred years and with all the achievements humanity had had that some people still lived in awful conditions.

Contrary to popular belief Larson did not have AIDS, but many of his friends did and as he lost many of those because of the disease he decided to name the characters of the chorus after the his friends who had passed away. Unfortunately Larson would not live to see the success his musical would have for a day before their Off Broadway opening he died of aortic aneurysm. The whole cast and crew was caught off guard but decided that the show must go on and did not cancel their opening to honor Larson’s memory and the show was an instant success. After two months of sold out performances they moved to Broadway where it remained until 2010 and now is still playing Off Broadway.

RENT has eight main characters with more or less the same plot importance, unlike La Boheme which had its main focus on Mimi and Rodolfo. In RENT Roger is a composer who has AIDS and has been depressed ever since his girlfriend, April, killed herself after finding out they had AIDS. It’s been almost an year that that’s happened and Roger refuses to live the studio apartment he shares with Mark, an independent film maker who had just been dumped by his girlfriend, Maureen, who traded him for another woman. Maureen is an actress who is planning a protest against the eviction order to the homeless people who live in the abandoned apartments in Alphabet City. Collins is a philosopher who is friends with Roger and Mark and comes over to spend Christmas with them but is robbed and beaten up o the street. It is then that he meets Angel, a gay drag queen percussionist who helps him get back on his feet and they instantly fall in love, both also have AIDS. And finally Mimi is an erotic dancer who falls for Roger and him for her, but he fights the feeling with all his will. Mimi also has AIDS and is a drug addict.

As it’s shown above every character in RENT has its correspondent in La Boheme. But even though the correspondents are quite clear because the names are so much alike, they are not exactly the same. Rodolfo for instance is divided in two characters in RENT, in Roger and Collins, same thing with Mimi who is divided in Mimi and Angel, Marcello who is divided in Mark and Joanne and finally Musetta in Maureen and Benny.

Even though both pieces have approximately the same length, RENT does have more plot development, maybe that’s a consequence of the fact that the author divided the characteristics of the original La Boheme characters in more than one character in RENT.    

Both pieces are undeniably connected, but since some of the events don’t happen in the same order it’s important to point out that I’ll be following the chronologic order of La Boheme.

Yay! There, part 1 of my thesis just to get you guys ready. I’ll post the analysis from Act1 next. Stay tuned peeps and have a great week!