While I deliberated which of the 12 doorbells to ring (and decided instead to use my mobile phone), the door creaked open and I was greeted by a shy young Italian who hurriedly guided me to my destination . . . the recording studio of Lucio Dalla, a singer-songwriter who has commanded a popularity vastly greater than that of any other Italian artist.

Lucio Dalla enjoyed moderate success throughout Europe in the early '80s with Banana Republic. But since 1943, he has been a pillar in the Italian pop-music scene.

His earliest material was highly experimental, particularly in the short period in which he collaborated with Bolognese poet Roberto Roversi, but after the Banana Republic tour he relaxed into a more accessible niche in the market.

To say Dalla is leading a double-life as an artist is the understatement of the century. Whilst enjoying this success as a pop artist, he has been recently flexing his experimental muscles in an altogether different guise . . . opera. In 2003, he shocked reserved Italian opera circles with his reworking of Tosca. Tosca-Amore Disperato was a crossover from pop to opera, to which, over the course of a nationwide Italian tour, 350,000 people flocked eagerly.

He has since moved on from the domain of Puccini to less controversial musical ground, that of Ferruccio Busoni and Igor Stravinsky. Within the same timeframe, both composers were compelled to explore the 15th-century Italian traditions of the commedia dell'arte through the medium of stock characters of the genre.

Dalla's modern interpretation of these two short works . . . Busoni's an opera, Stravinsky's a "ballet with song" . . . have already been staged at the Teatro Rossini of Lugo and the Teatro Communale of Bologna within the last year, and, in a coproduction with the two Italian companies, Wexford Festival Opera are bringing Dalla's world to the southeast.

The 64-year-old Dalla, with vaguely purple hair, greeted me wearing shorts, stripey socks pulled up to this knees, a colourful tshirt and sunglasses. Working on the mix for his new album, he introduced me to his two studio engineers . . . "These are the most important guys in my life."

As I acclimatised to the thick smoky atmosphere while Dalla, stubbing another cigarette into the overflowing ashtray, within minutes was waxing lyrical about his operatic project.

"Arlecchino is the one truly experimental opera that Busoni wrote. The text, which he wrote himself, is equally experimental as the music. Even though he was not directly involved in the political situation of the time, Busoni expresses the revolutionary spirit of the people who were suffering at the hands of those who created terrible war. Busoni's sentiments were anti-bourgeoisie; he hated the menace of power so there is an anarchic spirit in this opera. He understood what the people wanted in art and theatre and music.

On one side, divertimento, fun and distraction, and on the other side, reflection, some seriousness."

Dalla's artistic legacy was undoubtedly born of experimentation in his own writing.

"To be experimental is the only way for me.

It is very difficult to just write and write and write without asking yourself, what do I write?

"Busoni, Berg, Schoenberg . . . what they did with their music was just a continuity of the way their soul spoke to them and the experimental side of their music is a provocation from the same artist, the same soul. In the soul of the musician, there are many possibilities to change. For me, it is the same. I very much respect my audience . . . I refuse to give them the same thing every time I perform. For me, a performance is a meeting with the people and I respond to each different audience differently. I sing a song differently every time. Naturally, if I bore myself, I'll bore my audience."

Mainstream opera is not something that Dalla ever intends to venture into. "I don't like it. It's too serious. I was an actor for one week once in Il Trovatore and I was so bored. I like comedy and jokes in the drama because it is easy to find tragedy in the right joke. Also, I don't like the normal people of the opera house. When the premiere of an opera happens, there is so much stupid hype and there are too many people there who are just there because of the hype.

There is much institution in opera and this leaves a bad taste with me."

Dalla has reinvented both settings for the works he has undertaken. Arlecchino will wreak his inherent havoc not in Bergamo but somewhere else in the Tuscan hinterland and the Neapolitan Pulcinella will climb the ladder of success in New York. A fast-paced, energetic production is a certainty, which could border on the nearchaotic by the sounds of things.

"The action will be very fast on the stage because this is the kind of theatre that I really enjoy. People are used to listening to something comfortable and familiar but this is certainly not that. It is more shocking. I am completely free as a director. Singers are delighted to work in this very free way because it is not really acting for them as such. I encourage the singers to throw out more feelings than are written on the score.

For instance, Columbina (Sabina Willeit) is a German singer and sometimes she sings in German." With that he launched into a spontaneous and bizarre impression of these Germanic outbursts before being interrupted by the doorbell.