Rent (1996 Original Broadway Cast) [Cast Recording]

With Rent, one of Broadway’s biggest contemporary hits, composer Jonathan Larson took the framework and characters of Puccini’s La Boheme and revamped them around a group of twentysomething East Villagers struggling with adulthood, sexuality, AIDS, and the dashed career expectations of the ‘90s. The 1996 show won a raft of Obies, Tonys, and the Pulitzer Prize for drama – and is memorably skewered in the opening of Parker & Stone’s irreverent pop-culture spoof Team America. If it often seems a collection of dazzling performances in search of genuine emotional and dramatic connections, those set pieces are nonetheless memorable, including the lesbian-themed “Take Me Or Leave Me,” the quasi-rock ballad “One Song Glory,” and the show’s greatest contribution to the American standard songbook, “Seasons of Love,” also featured here in a bonus performance by Stevie Wonder.