“In a world of reggaeton and perreo, Rosalía is the queen of mambo”

But until then, José Manuel Zapata, like all young people of his age, listened to songs and with them “I fell in love, I fell in love, I dreamed, I was excited… I used them to be another person”. It’s this love for songs that led him to record his new project, “Giants‘, an album that he will present on Tuesday 16 at the Gran Teatro Caixabank Príncipe Pío in Madrid, in which the tenor will be accompanied by the CLM Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Francisco Velascoand the singer Miriam Cantéro (on the disk Extremadura Orchestraunder the direction of Juan Francisco Padilla).

“My dream – he said – was to one day do a concert of songs with a symphony orchestra; Many grow with the arrangements made by Juan Francisco Padilla, they take on an incredible dimension. For me, they are not arrangements, they are recreations… The songs are my life.

José Manuel Zapata dared in this album with Antonio Vega (“The place of my recreation”), Shakira (“There are loves”), Juan-Manuel Serrat (“Today could be a great day”), Francis Cabrel (“I love him to death”), Joaquin Sabina (“And they gave us ten”), Raphael (“When you’re not there”), Camilo Sesto (“To live like this is to die of love”) and even Rosalía (“G3n15”). “There is one, ‘When you are not there’, which cost me a lot to record because it is very difficult: it is an operatic aria with biblical dimensions…”

“I would love for Rosalía to listen to ‘G3n15’, which I sing hand in hand with Miriam Cantéroa spectacular flamenco singer; “I think it turned out amazing.” Asked about the phenomenon of the Barcelona singer, Zapata said that she seems to him “an immeasurable artist. There are things that I can’t stand, when he starts doing reggaeton… But there are things that are very well done. I listened to their entire album ‘Lux’. Let’s see, it seems that he invented gunpowder, and Bjork He was already doing these things fifteen or twenty years ago. But welcome. Blessed glory! In a world of reggaeton and perreo, Rosalía is the queen of mambo. Hearing strings on a 2025 album is a miracle. I already know that it’s not Bach, that it’s not Puccini. But if someone is curious, it doesn’t matter.

The repertoire was chosen between Zapata himself and Juan Francisco Padilla. “We mixed my personal tastes, the quality of the songs themselves, the possibilities of making an orchestral version with enough color and entity… For example, I wanted to record yes or yes ‘What Would I Not Give’, which he wrote Jose Luis Perales For Rocio Jurador, but Juanfran didn’t see it, and it’s true that I was a little far from who I am,” he explains.

But the tenor specifies that “the fundamental criterion, in the end, was the quality of the composition, that the song was good and that at one point in my life it meant something exciting”. He recognizes that these songs are not made for a lyrical singer: “I’m tired of listening to an album of this type of music sung by a lyrical voice. I made a ‘mix’; ‘The place of my recreation’ for example, I can’t sing with my lyrical voice.

José Manuel Zapata is a lyrical and light tenor, a string who, due to the finesse of his voice, performs more easily than a “spinto” tenor or even a baritone. “Placido Domingoin all, is the one who came closest to doing things right. Pavarotti – and I am a “Pavarottian” – did not approach popular music as well as Plácido.

When we remember what these songs meant in his life, José Manuel Zapata does not hesitate to emphasize “I want to die”. “In my teens, I started playing guitar and discovered the version he sang Manzanitaand through him the original of François Cabrel which, for some reason, became an anthem for my group of friends, who listened to this chubby guy singing it on the guitar. “I have a lot of fond memories of that song.”

But already completely immersed in poetry and opera, with Rossini as his main traveling companion, the songs continue with him. “I have always listened Miguel Povedahas Passion Vegahas José Mercé…They always traveled with me, but the lyrics completely captivated me,” he confesses. It’s no surprise that he has collaborated with all three of the aforementioned artists, in addition to Rocio Marquez either Marina Heredia on an album dedicated to tango. “When I was at the forefront of opera, I was asked to record records of Rossini, for example, and I thought there were a lot of people who did it much better than me, and I said no to several recordings. But I felt that these songs, this music that I carry in my soul, I could express it in a different way.

The words, says the tenor, “it’s Formula 1. and it burns a lot, it burns a lot… People, when they go to Real, to the Liceo, to the Metropolitan… unconsciously seek perfection. And you have to live with that. There are colleagues who manage it perfectly, but I had a psychological burden on me that made me very unhappy many days. this world to try to be happy, and no matter how much they told me: you have to sing! I thought no, that it was me who was sleeping with me and that my ultimate goal was to be happy.

He enjoys playing roles such as Jeremías in ‘El rey que rabió’, Benoit in ‘La bohème’…, which he recently played in La Zarzuela and Real respectively. “Roles I’m going to have a good time in now. I don’t want it anymore Rossini: those ‘Semiramide’, ‘Tancredi’. No, no, no. Of the twenty-five operas that Rossini owns, I think, I sang seventeen, which I learned in four or five years. Marine fabric! This composer is a tour de force: you must always be perfect, agile, acute, inanimate… And 8 years ago, I said: that’s enough! This was accompanied by my physical change (I lost over 60 kilos thanks to gastric bypass surgery). I did with Paco Mir the ‘Concerts for Zapata and Orchestra’ – where he mixed humor and classical music, I wrote a book, ‘Music for Life’…” We must add his participation as a jury in programs like ‘Tierra de Talent’, ‘Prodigios’ or ‘Aria’, which will be broadcast on TVE this Christmas. “And now I am very happy,” he concludes.

José Manuel Zapata is very hard on himself when asked if he has heard his own album. “Yes, and I can’t stand it. But the same thing always happened to me, at first I can’t stand it but then I accept myself. This happened to me with the tango album; At first I didn’t get along, but if I put it on now, I like it. He is willing to listen to criticism and even atrocities regarding this work. “But I’m at a point in my life where I don’t really care. There will be people who will be horrified by what I do, because I do it my way, and people who will love it. But I’m 52 and I’ve already learned that it’s impossible to please everyone. There will be people who criticize it, and that’s fine… You will more or less like it. But I’m very happy to do it. My truth is this. And we did it with a lot of respect, with a lot of quality, with a very good recording. But of course, I am a tenor who sings ‘El lugar de mi recreo’…”

Regarding the music that is made today, Zapata believes that “it is a reflection of who we are… The distance between Bach and the music that was made in the 90s is much less than between Bach and the music that is made today, from my point of view… The music that is consumed massively today, which is consumed by young people and which only consumes that, is monothematic, monorhythmic and monoharmonic. “Mainstream”, of course, the vast majority. That’s why “Gigantes” was a challenge, it was loving people who, like me, need another type of music because it is also right and necessary that they give us some music that we can listen to.

For the moment, the album is only available on platforms. “I have my house full of CDs that are luxury coasters. I thought about releasing it on vinyl, but I was doing research and there are queues to make vinyl; There are very few factories, they disappeared with the disappearance of vinyl and now, in addition to being difficult, it is very expensive. But if it works well on the platform…”, a media which, Zapata admits, changed his life; I was one of those who went everywhere with a bunch of CDs like that -he holds out his arms-. And this little plastic that no one could open… Now I have any music in the world at the click of a button, I think it’s one of the coolest things about progress.

But, Zapata says, he has recently rediscovered the pleasure of sitting and listening to music. “My wife gave me a record player and I sit by the fireplace and I don’t read or do anything, I just listen to music. Vinyl, I can’t explain why, but it’s nice.