“Rent” burst onto the musical theatre scene in the ’90s in a well-known, albeit tragic, sequence of events: The untimely death of its writer, Jonathan Larson, the night before its off-Broadway premiere immediately catapulted it to notoriety, and soon after, to international-theatre-phenomenon status. Since then, the musical itself has often been overshadowed by its fascinating backstory.

The musical, a genre-defying blend of rock opera, drama and musical theatre spectacle, follows a year in the lives of citizens of New York City’s “Alphabet City,” an urban bohemia reeling from drug addiction, the aftermath of the ’80s AIDS epidemic and an ever-present economic paranoia. Based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera “La