Includes FREE MP3
version
of this album.
or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
More Buying Choices
Red Tag Market Add to Cart
$15.28  & FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
CastlesandA... Add to Cart
$19.95  & FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Color:
Image not available

To view this video download Flash Player

 

Rent (1996 Original Broadway Cast) [Cast Recording]

Jeff Potter , Anthony Jackson , Daniel A. Weiss , Ira Siegel , Kenny Brescia , Steve Skinner , Adam Pascal , Aiko Nakasone , Anthony Rapp , Jonathan Larson Audio CD
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (579 customer reviews)

Price: $15.55 & FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
  Special Offers Available
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
 : Includes FREE MP3 version of this album.
   Provided by Amazon Digital Services, Inc. Terms and Conditions. Does not apply to gift orders.
Only 20 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Want it Tuesday, May 21? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
Complete your purchase to save the MP3 version to Cloud Player.

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
MP3 Music, 43 Songs, 1996 $18.99  
Audio CD, Cast Recording, 1996 $15.55  
Audio Cassette, Cast Recording, 1996 --  

Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s

Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or view the MP3 Album.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         


Disc 1:

Samples
Song TitleArtist Time Price
listen  1. Tune Up #1Original Broadway Cast "Rent"0:50$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  2. Voice Mail #1Original Broadway Cast "Rent"0:36$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  3. Tune Up #2Original Broadway Cast "Rent" 1:32$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  4. RentVarious artists 4:25$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  5. You Okay Honey?Original Broadway Cast "Rent" 1:41$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  6. Tune Up #3Original Broadway Cast "Rent"0:24$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  7. One Song GloryOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 2:43$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  8. Light My CandleVarious artists 4:05$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  9. Voice Mail #2Original Broadway Cast "Rent"0:45$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen10. Today 4 UOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 3:29$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen11. You'll SeeOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 2:57$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen12. Tango: MaureenOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 3:28$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen13. Life SupportOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 1:58$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen14. Out TonightVarious artists 3:48$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen15. Another DayVarious artists 4:44$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen16. Will I?Original Broadway Cast "Rent" 2:29$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen17. On The StreetOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 1:32$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen18. Santa FeOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 3:12$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen19. I'll Cover YouVarious artists 2:28$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen20. We're OkayOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 1:22$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen21. Christmas BellsOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 6:04$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen22. Over The MoonOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 5:16$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen23. La Vie BohemeOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 8:00$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen24. I Should Tell YouOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 3:00$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen25. La Vie Boheme BVarious artists 1:54$1.29  Buy MP3 


Disc 2:

Samples
Song TitleArtist Time Price
listen  1. Seasons Of LoveVarious artists 2:51$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  2. Happy New YearOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 3:24$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  3. Voice Mail #3Original Broadway Cast "Rent"0:50$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  4. Happy New Year BOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 3:56$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  5. Take Me Or Leave MeVarious artists 3:43$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  6. Seasons Of Love BOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 1:06$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  7. Without YouOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 4:21$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  8. Voice Mail #4Original Broadway Cast "Rent"0:31$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen  9. ContactOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 2:07$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen10. I'll Cover You (Reprise)Original Broadway Cast "Rent" 2:50$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen11. HalloweenOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 1:48$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen12. Goodbye LoveOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 5:57$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen13. What You OwnOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 3:56$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen14. Voice Mail #5Original Broadway Cast "Rent"0:55$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen15. FinaleOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 5:30$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen16. Your EyesOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 2:20$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen17. Finale BVarious artists 2:53$1.29  Buy MP3 
listen18. Seasons Of Love (Reprise) feat. Stevie WonderOriginal Broadway Cast "Rent" 4:26$1.29  Buy MP3 


Amazon Artist Stores

All the music, full streaming songs, photos, videos, biographies, discussions, and more.
.

Special Offers and Product Promotions

  • Buy a CD or a vinyl record, get a $1 Amazon MP3 Credit. Limit one promotional credit per customer. Here's how (restrictions apply)
  • Includes FREE MP3 version of this album Here's how (restrictions apply)

Frequently Bought Together

Rent (1996 Original Broadway Cast) + Wicked (2003 Original Broadway Cast)
Price for both: $24.04

Buy the selected items together


Product Details

  • Composer: Jonathan Larson
  • Audio CD (August 27, 1996)
  • Number of Discs: 2
  • Format: Cast Recording
  • Label: Verve
  • ASIN: B000005ALT
  • Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Music
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (579 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,753 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Into Broadway's creative vacuum of revivals, movie adaptations, and Hollywood star vehicles comes Rent, the story of squatters, junkies, performance artists, struggling musicians, drag queens, aspiring filmmakers, and HIV-positives (and you thought Miss Saigon's helicopter landing was cool). Undoubtedly among the defining pop cultural events of 1996, Rent has already won four Tony awards and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. More importantly, it threatens to bring substance back to the Great White Way.

Transposing Puccini's 100-year-old opera La Bohème into modern day Bohemia (19th-century Paris's Left Bank becomes late-20th-century New York's East Village where the scourge of tuberculosis becomes the plague of AIDS) Rent celebrates life among the young, sick, and unconventional. While Broadway shows are hardly the place for authentic portrayals of the latest marginalized hipsters, composer Jonathan Larson (who died at age 36, days before his musical opened) managed to sculpt vivid characters and scenes that bring Avenue A as close as it will ever come to 42nd Street. And by telling a socially relevant story of living without the guarantee of a future (renting, that is), Larson does his own little bit to define an X'ed generation. At worst, Rent is the Hair of the '90s.

For the majority of us who won't be seeing Rent anytime soon, the Original Cast Recording is more than just an after-show souvenir. Well-packaged with a complete libretto, the two-CD set is a worthwhile album separate of live performance. Full of songs that are funny and catchy, inspiring and touching, smart and hip and not overly sentimental, Rent mixes showtune pop with elements of rock, R&B, dance, gospel, and tango to make one of the best albums of the year--certainly the best rock opera in decades. La vie bohème, indeed. --Roni Sarig

Product Description

Double disc set in a 'fat' jewelbox. Original Broadway Cast Recording produced by Arif Mardin. Scuff on Disc One will not affect play. Thick booklet.

Customer Reviews

I'd reccomend it to ANYONE who loves musicals or just great music. A Customer  |  124 reviewers made a similar statement
The story is good, the music is amazing, and the characters are so real. Sophie  |  69 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
63 of 64 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Even more meaning when you've lived it November 16, 2005
Format:Audio CD
I first saw Rent in 1996. That year was quite a year for me. I first tested positive for HIV, my lover died of AIDS, I was an addict at that time. and I saw Rent for the first time (the first of 6 times over the past almost 10 years). Those who claim that Rent is trite, or meaningless, that the characters aren't real clearly haven't been exposed to the things I have in my life. Rent is relevant on so many levels.

So many talk about their favorite songs from this recording, and there are so many different lists of favorites, as Rent shows we are all individuals and our spirits are all drawn to different things. Interestingly, my strongest connection is to "Will I?" I never see that listed on any list of favorite selections, but for me it is incredibly moving. For all 6 of the shows I've been to, I've been lucky enough to get the $20 "night of" seats in the front row. Each and every time, "Will I?" turned me into a sobbing mess. Why? Well, every day for the past almost 10 years, I've asked myself the same questions. They are pretty much ingrained in the soul of every HIV+ person I know. These are fears and apprehensions that touch each of our souls deeply.

The rest of the CD is also beautiful. Let's face it, this was supposed to be raw and real, and not meant to be another Phantom or Les Mis.

Finally, the reprise of "I'll Cover You" has great meaning for me. Living in San Francisco in 1996, I knew a few people in the business and was able to get the music early on. It was performed live at my lover's memorial service and I have to say it was one of the most memorable moments of my life.

Has Rent changed my life? Probably not. My life was changed enough without Rent. I will say that it has helped me to put words to my life, to things that are hard to put words to.

I can't say this CD will change your life. I can't say that this recording is still relevant to our world today. Give it a shot, you won't be disappointed.

No Day But Today....
Was this review helpful to you?
81 of 87 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars "No day but today" - Jonathan Larson's "Rent" January 16, 2001
Format:Audio CD
"Rent" is one of those musicals where Barbra Streisand is never going to cover any of the songs on one of her Broadway albums. The pastiche of music styles reminds me of "Hair," "Godspell" and "Cats"--there are 43 tracks, including a reprise of "Seasons of Love" featuring Stevie Wonder singing with the 15-member cast--and to a large extent "Rent" also shares with those shows the ensemble nature of the cast. But just because the songs from this show are not destined to be Broadway standards does not detract from their power. These are songs driven by character and context more than melody and voice, reflecting pretty much the complete spectrum of musical styles. You have straight forward rock-and-roll in "Rent" and "Goodbye Love," but also everything from Gospel in "Seasons of Love to the Tango in "Tango: Maureen." More importantly, what stands out in the performance of these songs is how the characters are more prominant than the voices: Adam Pascal as Roger, Daphne Rubin-Vega as Mimi, Anthony Rappas Mark, Jesse L. Martin as Tom, Taye Diggs as Ben, and Wilson Jermaine Heredia as Angel. This is a story with songs and the intergration of the two is something you would expect much more from an opera than a traditional musical.

This would make sense since "Rent" was inspired by Puccini's opera "La Boheme," but knowledge of the "original" is not at all necessary, although when Collins loses his coat ("You Okay Honey") that will bring a smile of recognition to those who are in the know as will a couple of guitar riffs. The main thing is that if we are talking opera, that means at least one of the lead characters will be dead by the time the curtain rings down. Certainly in that regard "Rent" is a sobering story, with the additional pathos of the death of its creator Jonathan Larson on the day the show opened. Instead of poverty we are now dealing with the dregs of society, people afflicted by drugs and disease. Thus we have Roger, the song-writer and ex-junkie struggling with writer's block and Mimi, the beautiful junkie from downstairs, as well as Collins and Angel, both HIV-Positive. These are people who celebrate the New Year remembering those they have lost and wondering who will be next. The East Village industrial loft that is the setting for "Rent" is a place where those abandoned by the world find comfort in each other and the philosophy that there is always "No day but today." I keep coming back to the idea that "Rent" is one of those theatrical experiences we hear tell about from time to time, richly deserving of the Pulitizer Prize and well worth catching on tour.

Was this review helpful to you?
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Revolutionizing Broadway, May 5, 2000
Format:Audio CD
Joy. Hope. Life. Love. Those are just a few of the words that come to mind when describing RENT. Others would include "brilliant", "powerful", and "amazing". Yes, the hype has been a bit much lately. The interviews, the advertisements, the talk shows. Yet RENT manages to encounter each and every one of those and still engulf the audience and all of Broadway in a sea of energy and melody, changing what was becoming a dying and stale art form. RENT has brought back the "hipness" to Broadway, but does not lose any of the theatric traditions that make up a great musical. Its complex plotline includes such Brodway taboos as AIDS, homosexuality (a part of it, but NOT it, drug use, S&M dancing, and, probably the biggest nineties Broadway no-no, substance.

All that being said, the highlight of RENT, as is with any musical, is the exciting and stirring pop-rock score contained in this two hour CD. The late Jonathan Larson was able to almost flawlessly combine traditional theatre music with modern-day rock, pop, and gospel; not an easy feat. Sondheim once said that pop music and theatre can't combine because pop music does not emphasize the lyrical structure of a song. Larson has, in this writer's opinion, proved him wrong. RENT is influenced incredibly by Stephen Sondheim. The "Tune Ups", which many people hate, are genius. Larson was somehow able to do what nobody after Sondheim could do- combine modern-day vernacular with music and melody and yet still make it sound "natural". An even better examples are the songs "Light My Candle", "Happy New Year", and "Goodbye Love". Each track is a giant flowing conversation with enough melody to sing along to.

But despite the influence of Sondheim, RENT also has its number of solos and ensemble numbers which, if done correct, could be hits. "Out Tonight" and "Rent" are two energetic rockers with great guitar hooks and intelligent, slightly punk, lyrics. "Without You" is a soft and beautiful melody which is likely to tear your heart out. "What You Own" has cynical lyrics like Rage Against the Machine ("When you're living in America... you're what you own") but a tune more reminiscent of Third Eye Blind, or other catchy pop-rock bands. "One Song Glory" is an amazing solo about accomplishment before death. Other highlights include: "Take Me Or Leave Me" (a soulful duet), "I'll Cover You" (a love ballad for two men), "Will I?" (a heartwrenching ensemble number about AIDS), and "La Vie Boheme" (a toe-tapping and racy song celebrating non-conformity). Interestingly enough, "Seasons of Love", the general favorite, is probably the weakest song in the whole show. It doesn't really add much to the plot and has lyrics that are only powerful when seen on stage.

Sad to say, the energy in RENT (such a crucial part of the show) is very often lost in the recording. "Glory", probably the best number in the whole show, comes off as almost whiny in this recording. Adam Pascal's hoarse voice, though wonderful live, is not powerful when heard on this CD.

Still, quibbles aside, RENT is a powerful show and this recording is an accomplished testimony to its brilliance. Both poignant and hilarious, one finishes listening to this CD ready to go out and make something of himself- because, after all, there is "no day but today".

Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Rent
What can I say Rent is one of the best musicals ever.
Last year i got a copy of the final broadway show
and got to see the magic of rent,haveing the complete
cast... Read more
Published 13 days ago by richard wirt
5.0 out of 5 stars RENT 1996 Original Broadway Cast
After seeing the movie first, I wanted to see the show that precluded it. I noticed that there were songs that weren't in the movie, so I bought this CD to hear the rest of it. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Susan R.
5.0 out of 5 stars rent soundtrack
excellent recording some of broadways original superstars. This CD comes with a background of the musical and full lyric booklet
Published 7 months ago by astonian
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth it
I grew up listening to this sound track...it's incredible and will always be my favorite broadway play. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Courtney Cheniqua
5.0 out of 5 stars Musical synergy.
From highs to lows. Fast paced to slow. This musical has energy from beginning to end. The cast bring amazing vocals and a fun story to your ears and leave nothing behind.
Published 8 months ago by Taj C.
2.0 out of 5 stars Rent (1996 Original Broadway Cast)
Rent (1996 Original Broadway Cast)is the 1996 recording with the original Broadway cast. I must say that I was not so impressed with this so called awesome musical. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Bjorn Viberg
5.0 out of 5 stars I like it
This CD is nice! I watched the off-broadway musical, then, I wanted to buy this soundtrack.
It is cheaper in amazon or other online-shops than in the theater. Read more
Published 13 months ago by aj
5.0 out of 5 stars Great music
This album is the original broadway cast of Rent. While the musical itself may have some plot flaws, the music is amazing and moving.
Published 15 months ago by Dan
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great CD
RENT has some GREAT songs on it. I have bought this CD many times over the years - it has many GREAT songs on it. I have bought one CD recently, and it was the Rent CD. Read more
Published 17 months ago by connie
1.0 out of 5 stars Nowhere NEAR as great as people claim it to be
RENT is often considered one of the greatest rock operas of all time, one of the best LBGT-themed musicals about AIDS/HIV, and the HAIR of the 1990s. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Pato Cree
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Forums

Topic From this Discussion
Which Mimi is your favorite?
I would have to say Rubin-Vega.. She just brings so much more to the role, it feels like a real-life Mimi living the in the songs as opposed to someone "acting".
Apr 14, 2007 by Omar Morado |  See all 6 posts
Have something you'd like to share about this product?
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions



What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?



Look for Similar Items by Category