Producer Mackintosh "Gob-Smacked" By Boyle's "I Dreamed a Dream"; Song Is YouTube Hit

By Mark Shenton
April 15, 2009

The rendition of Les Misérables' "I Dreamed a Dream," performed on the U.K. weekly ITV Channel TV show "Britain's Got Talent" by unemployed singer Susan Boyle, has turned the song into a hit tune all over again.

The performance by the 47-year-old on the show, which aired April 11 and was watched by an average of 10.3 million viewers, has been viewed over four million times on YouTube already, and the song has now entered the mid-week single charts at number 60. The original cast recording of the song, featuring Tony and Olivier winner Patti LuPone, is now number one in the iTunes vocal download chart.

In a press statement, producer Cameron Mackintosh has echoed the comments of judges Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden, saying, "Just like the judges and audience I was gob-smacked by the emotional powerhouse performance of Susan Boyle's show stopping rendition of 'I Dreamed a Dream.' Vocally it is one of the best versions of the song I've ever heard. Touching, thrilling and uplifting. I do hope she gets to sing it for the Queen."

	Susan Boyle

"I Dreamed a Dream" is the show-stopping song performed early in the first act of Les Misérables by the ill-fated Fantine. Patti LuPone created the role on the West End stage; Randy Graff played Fantine on Broadway. Lyrics for the Alain Boublil-Claude-Michel Schönberg-Herbert Kretzmer song include, "But there are dreams that cannot be/and there are storms we cannot weather./I had a dream my life would be/so different from this hell I'm living/so different now from what it seemed./Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."