Across a spacious living room that seems to float 23 blue-sky storeys above Central Park South, Luciano Pavarotti is slumped at his oversized desk like a corpulent Christ. Arms theatrically cantilevered over high-backed chairs on either side of his frame, his neck and shoulders draped in a paisley Hermes scarf that complements his lime-green shirt, he appears hunkered down, a mountain of a man wedged into place.

At this stage in his career you'd expect that Pavarotti, 68, would be satisfied to stay put, wedged into a role and a place he knows well. He has sung in all of the world's major concert halls, in most of the major roles. He has also done more to popularize opera than perhaps any other singer in history, both in performing with those other two tenors and in hooking up for various charities with pop musicians such as Elton John, Tracy Chapman, Meat Loaf and Bono. But Pavarotti isn't finished evolving. For the first time in 38 years, he's a new dad this year. Baby toys are scattered among the awards and memorabilia ringing this living room, for Alice (Ah-lee-chay), the daughter he had in January with his partner and former personal assistant, Nicoletta Mantovani. And now, two years before he says he will take his final bow, he wants to reach out in a new way to audiences who might not be inclined to come to the opera house.

Last month, Pavarotti issued the crossover disc Ti Adoro, his first album of Italian pop songs. It's either an inspired and fanciful move, an abomination, or both, but the tenor is firm about his opinion of the project: Just because Ti Adoro is filled with lighter songs doesn't mean it is any less musically legitimate than his usual fare. "These songs, this a piece of opera," he says in his mangled English. "Is not a chippy-choopy, superlight, against my feeling. No no no, this music is not a joke. This is music!". This is the music he's talking about: 13 Italian songs written for the attention span of pop radio, larded with the emotional dips and swells of a manipulative Hollywood soundtrack. They range in tone from Il Gladiatore, a stately and mournful aria written but not used for the Oscar-winning film Gladiator, to the title track, a peppy swing number that may strike some as the musical equivalent of Ben & Jen: a PR-inspired marriage of two pugnacious elements better left in their own corners. As part of the marketing push, Pavarotti appears in a video for the song, prancing uncomfortably in front of large-scale letters that spell out PAVASHOW while surrounded by skimpily dressed showgirls.