Jonathan Larson received the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for RENT. RENT received four 1996 Tony Awards (including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Score of a Musical); six drama Desk Awards (including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Music and Best Lyrics); Best Musical Awards from the New York Drama Critics Circle and the Outer Critics Circle; and three Obie Awards (including Outstanding Book, Music and Lyrics). Previously, he received the Richard Rodgers Production Award, the Richard Rodgers Development Grant, the Stephen Sondheim Award and the Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Theatre Foundation's Commendation Award. Earlier work includes Superbia; tick, tick...BOOM!; the music for J.P. Morgan Saves the Nation; and and numerous individual numbers. He also wrote music for Sesame Street and the children's book-cassettes An American Tail and Land Before Time as well as for Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner. He conceived and directed a children's video, Away We Go!, for which he wrote four songs. RENT had its world premiere on February 13, 1996 at New York Theatre Workshop and opened at Broadway's Nederlander Theatre on April 29, 1996. Mr. Larson died unexpectedly of an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm, believed to have been caused by Marfan Syndrome, on January 25, 1996. It was ten days before his 36th birthday.
Not only did he die 10 days before his birthday, RENT was supposed to premire at the New York Theatre Workshop the next evening. "What we guessed happened is this:," said family friend Jonathan Burkhart, "Jonathan must've gotten home about midnight, twelve-thirty and put on a pot of water to boil for tea. There in the kitchen his aorta opened up. It had been weakening for days. The last breakage happened, and it ripped open. He probably felt another sharp pain much like he felt before. This time, as blood was pouring into his chest, he probably fell unconscious within ten or fifteen seconds. He died within about five minutes." The RENT performance was pushed back two weeks.
