Rent

Lin-Manuel Miranda has said repeatedly that Rent is the show that made him think he could write musicals: he saw it as a teenager, and it was the first time contemporary popular music and people who looked like his neighbourhood were on a Broadway stage. What carries over: sung-through construction with almost no spoken book, a company of young performers in a city that is part of the subject, and the conviction that the current sound of pop music belongs in a theatre. The line is also personal. Miranda's In the Heights was developed in the wake of Rent, and he has spoken at length about Jonathan Larson, whose own story he later directed.

Larson transposed Puccini's opera to the East Village, one century on almost to the year. He said so plainly; it is not a resemblance somebody noticed afterwards. The mapping is close enough to list:

• Rodolfo and Mimì become Roger and Mimi, and she still lives downstairs and still knocks because her candle has gone out
• Marcello and Musetta become Mark and Maureen; Colline becomes Collins; Schaunard becomes Angel
• Benoît the landlord becomes Benny, and is given a reason to have changed sides
• Tuberculosis becomes HIV/AIDS, which is the substitution the whole piece turns on

Musetta's waltz, the Café Momus scene and the death in the final act all have direct counterparts.