SOURCE: "Rent Goes Up—to Broadway," in Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1996, p. F1.

[Below, Winer ponders whether Rent would be as popular if Larson had lived, suggesting that "what would have been merely moving in Rent is made almost unbearably bittersweet by the knowledge."]

When Rent, a rock musical version of Puccini's La Boheme opened off-Broadway last February, Jonathan Larson garnered the kind of rave reviews that young, struggling composer-lyricists pray and dream for.

Larson wasn't there to read the reviews—he died of an aortic aneurysm on the night of the final dress rehearsal at the age of 35. His opus depicts the life he knew—the disease- and drug-plagued but joyous Bohemia of New York's East Village, circa 1995. More than one reviewer dubbed the show a watershed event in the history of the American musical and declared Larson the posthumous savior of the form. The press celebrated...