| Musical Investigation |
| official Rent website | official La Bohème website | contact me |
scene from La Bohème 
scene from Rent |
Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème and Jonathan Larson's Rent by Jenny Parsons
La Bohème, considered to be Giacomo Puccini's masterpiece, was produced in 1896 when Puccini was 38 years old. La Bohème is an opera in four acts with a mixture of lighthearted and dramatic scenes. The opera has several beautiful arias but is mostly in the recitative style.
Themes Rent’s most noticeable musical allusion to La Bohème is the melody of Musetta’s Waltz or Quando me’n vo’. Fragments of Musetta’s Waltz are inserted throughout the musical, and the entire theme is finally played in the song “Your Eyes,” just before Rent’s finale. Rhythm One similarity between Rent and La Bohème is the use of parlando-rubato (or recitative) style. The music is often used to portray rapid conversations or arguments between the characters, such as in “Dunque: é proprio finita!” from La Bohème, in which Musetta and Marcello are arguing, or in “Take Me or Leave Me” from Rent, Maureen and Joanne’s argument. However, Rent often has a definite pulse, unlike the mostly smooth and flowing music of La Bohème. Dynamics There is a large variety of dynamics in both La Bohème and Rent that adds to the emotional effect of the music. For example, in Rent, the soft dynamics in the beginning of “I’ll Cover You (reprise)” make it a more tender love song, and the loud dynamics in the end convey passion. Similarly, the dynamics in La Bohème’s “O Mimì Tu Più Non Torni” gradually become louder as the emotion becomes stronger. Texture The texture of the vocal music in La Bohème and Rent is similar. Often the different melodies of the voices layer to create a complex polyphonic texture. The instrumentation of the two, however, is vastly different. Rent has modern instrumentation while La Bohème is written for a symphony. In La Bohème the focus is mainly on the singers, but the instruments play a larger role in Rent, so the instrumentation is thicker as opposed to in La Bohème where it is relatively thin most of the time. Even though Rent is based on La Bohème, the time periods and locations in which they were written made them very different, and they belong to contrasting genres – rock and opera, respectively. In a way, the subject matter of Rent -- AIDS, drugs, and sexuality – mirrors the style of the music. It is more ‘edgy’ while La Bohème is classic, just like its subject matter. This makes sense. After all, in an opera or musical, the music is there to portray the subject as art. Both La Bohème and Rent do so, in their own ways. Sources Kamien, Roger. Music: An Appreciation (Seventh Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. http://www.siteforrent.com http://www.bohemeonbroadway.com |
| official Rent website | official La Bohème website | contact me |
