Les Miserables is one of my favorite musicals with beautiful music, impressive staging and a moving story line adapted from the novel by Victor Hugo. If the previous post whetted your curiosity, you can listen to the whole arrangement of “I Dreamed a Dream” in this video.
“Fantine” sings of dreams gone by. Abandoned by the man she once loved, the father of her daughter Cosette, she is unemployed and destitute and trying to provide for her daughter. Read more about her character in this Wikipedia article.
And as long as I’m at it, here’s “A Little Fall of Rain” which Eponine, mortally wounded at the barricade, sings with Marius as she dies in his arms.