MovieScore Media has released the original score for the 2026 Spanish comedy My Wife Is a Ghost (El fantasma de mi mujer), directed by Maria Ripoll, starring María Hervás, Javier Rey and Macarena Gómez and produced by Mediacrest, Netflix, 3Cat, Movistar Plus+ and RTVE. The album features the film’s original music composed by Zacarías M. De la Riva (Automata, The Kill Team, Tad – The Lost Explorer, Below Zero, Bent, Black Snow, You Keep the Kids). Also included is Tonia Richii’s & Simon Smith’s cover of Don’t Leave Me This Way. The movie follows a man’s, Fernando, perfect life with wife María and mistress Julia shatters when Julia claims she accidentally killed María. After reporting María missing, Fernando receives a call from her – and his nightmare begins.
The music of El fantasma de mi mujer becomes another character in the story, reinforcing the tension, humour and emotional relationships with very distinctive instrumentation and leitmotifs defined for the protagonists. Among the most original elements of this soundtrack is the use of bottles and percussion as a distinctive feature in moments of comedy of errors, adding a rhythmic sound full of personality. This technique gives the scenes an organic texture and an almost physical pulse. One of the most characteristic moments of the score comes with the leitmotif of María, the wife character, who presents the ghostliest facet of the film. To achieve this, Zacarías M. de la Riva uses the organic sound of the ROLI piano, creating a spectral and enveloping texture that accompanies her presence with an almost “vocal” rather than percussive expressiveness. For her part, the leitmotif of Julia, the mistress, is constructed through the bass clarinet, with a seductive and dark tone, almost like a siren song. The piano becomes the emotional heart of the story. For the scenes of intrigue, the soundtrack relies on the expressive power of strings, recorded with the prestigious Budapest Symphony Orchestra, providing a high-level cinematic atmosphere and sustained tension that grows with dramatic precision. In addition, the soundtrack incorporates repetitive electronic and vocal motifs that reinforce the suspense, providing a modern and obsessive pulse that keeps the tension latent throughout the narrative.
ABOUT THE COMPOSER
Zacarías M. de la Riva is one of the most versatile talents of the Spanish film music scene. A former student of telecommunication who then enrolled to the Berklee College of Music to study film music, de la Riva has already proven himself to be talented in every genre he’s come across. Previous de la Riva scores issued by MovieScore Media include his collaborations with Gabe Ibáñez, Hierro (2009) and Automata (2014), as well as the cinema-themed murder mystery Imago Mortis (2009), the crime thriller Below Zero (2021) and four animations scores: the first and third Tadeo Jones film Tad the Lost Explorer (2011) and Tad the Lost Explorer and the Curse of the Mummy (2022), as well as the Mexican animated movie Un gallo con muchos huevos (2015) and its sequel Un rescate de huevitos (2021).
