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Musical lists

Sad musicals that will make you cry

Some musicals are built to break your heart. Les Miserables and Miss Saigon pair sweeping scores with stories of sacrifice, Rent and Falsettos face the AIDS crisis head on, and Next to Normal looks honestly at mental illness and grief. Newer shows like Hadestown and Maybe Happy Ending prove that a quiet love story can be just as devastating.

Each show below links to a guide with the plot, songs, and characters. The notes here avoid spoilers, so you can choose a tearjerker without knowing exactly how it ends; the full guides do cover the endings if you want to know first.

15 musicals on this list.

  • Carousel1945 · Richard Rodgers · Golden AgeA troubled marriage and a father's chance to reach the daughter he never knew build to You'll Never Walk Alone, a song that rarely leaves a dry eye.
  • West Side Story1957 · Leonard Bernstein · Golden AgeYoung love blooms across a gang divide in New York, and Bernstein's soaring score makes the tragedy that follows hit even harder.
  • Evita1979 · Andrew Lloyd Webber · Sung-throughEva Peron's dazzling rise is shadowed by illness, and her final scenes turn a story of ambition into something unexpectedly tender.
  • Les Misérables1987 · Claude-Michel Schönberg · Sung-throughDecades of sacrifice, a doomed student uprising, and songs like I Dreamed a Dream and Bring Him Home leave few dry eyes in the house.
  • Miss Saigon1991 · Claude-Michel Schönberg · Sung-throughA young mother's devotion to her son and a love torn apart by war build to one of the most wrenching finales in musical theatre.
  • Falsettos1992 · William Finn · Sung-throughA funny, neurotic family comedy turns devastating in its second act as the AIDS crisis reaches the people at its center.
  • Rent1996 · Jonathan Larson · Rock/PopFriends in New York's East Village face poverty and the AIDS crisis together, and Seasons of Love reminds you how precious each year is.
  • Titanic the Musical1997 · Maury Yeston · Sung-throughKnowing how the voyage ends gives every passenger's hopes, from stokers to millionaires, a quiet ache that builds through the show.
  • Parade1998 · Jason Robert Brown · DramaThe true story of a Jewish factory manager convicted amid fury and prejudice in 1913 Atlanta, and the wife who fights for him, is moving and enraging.
  • Aida2000 · Elton John · Rock/PopA forbidden love between an enslaved princess and an Egyptian captain forces impossible choices between heart and nation.
  • Next to Normal2009 · Tom Kitt · DramaA mother's bipolar disorder and a family's unspoken grief are handled with rare honesty, and the rock score cuts deep.
  • Fun Home2015 · Jeanine Tesori · DramaA cartoonist looks back on the father she never fully understood, and the distance between them is the quiet heartbreak at the show's core.
  • Hadestown2019 · Anaïs Mitchell · Rock/PopThe myth of Orpheus and Eurydice warns you how it ends from the start, yet the show still makes you hope it will turn out differently.
  • Maybe Happy Ending2024 · Will Aronson · Rock/PopTwo lonely helper robots fall in love while knowing their time is limited, a gentle romance that sneaks up on audiences.
  • The Last Five Years2025 · Jason Robert Brown · DramaOne partner tells the story forward and the other backward, so you watch a marriage begin and unravel at once, and the final moments sting.

More lists of musicals

All Broadway musicals A to ZMusicals by composer