Based on Puccini's La Bohème, Rent is the story of love and loyalty among starving artists in New York's East Village. In Puccini's version, his Parisian bohemians are afflicted with tuberculosis--the entire opera takes place under the spectre of this ghastly illness. For Larson (composer/lyricist/librettist of Rent), the modern equivalent was clearly AIDS, a disease which had struck down several of his closest friends.But Larson refused to let his story be overcome by the hopelessness and despair often associated with the disease. There is a wonderful moment in which Roger, a struggling rock musician, and Mimi, a heroin addict and S&M dancer, are having a lover's quarrel when their beepers go off and each takes out a bottle of pills. It's the signal for an "AZT break," and suddenly they realize that they're both HIV-positive.