SOURCE: "Flaws Aside, Rent Lives and Breathes," in The New York Times, March 17, 1996, sec. 2, p. 31.

[In the following review, Holland discusses Rent in terms of its relation to high art.]

Who has musical culture and who doesn't? A letter to the editors of this newspaper recently complained that young people don't. Its author used opera on the radio as a measuring stick. "I … remember walking from one end of the Yale campus to the other on a warm Saturday afternoon without missing a beat of the Metropolitan Opera broadcast through open dormitory windows," the offended correspondent writes. "Thirty years later, the same trip yields loud rock." A strong indictment, but of what?

Possibly the very culture the writer is trying to defend. Not that paying attention to long-deceased Italian composers is a waste of time. Study and appreciation of them and their music have meant a valuable life's...