I grew up in Worcestershire, and in my primary school we had a very formidable headmistress who would usher us in to morning assemblies playing her upright piano, rather well I have to say; it was usually hymns. And then one day she surprised us all. The school had invested in a gramophone player, and out of it came this resounding music – I’d never heard classical music before. It was the Trumpet Voluntary by Jeremiah Clarke and it made a huge impression on me – it opened up the senses, and was a very exciting moment.

From then I started to really engage in ballet dancing – I wished, as a child, to be a ballet dancer. My mum couldn’t afford for me to have many classes, but I would look on the television at Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. I also went to a performance in Birmingham of Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, and when the concertmaster started playing the violin solo I just remember bursting into tears, it was so extraordinary.

I’m listening to Elgar every day because my husband Sting is obsessed with the Sea Pictures song-cycle, particularly ‘Where Corals Lie’, and so I’ve been listening to Dame Janet Baker sing that most beautiful piece. Then from the neighbouring county there is the music of Vaughan Williams – I remember discovering The Lark Ascending, and that beautiful violin – you feel the ascending of the birds as you ascend as a human being into that experience.

My street in Worcestershire was in a council estate, and we were in and out of each other’s homes all the time, everybody being your aunt and uncle, though of course they weren’t blood relatives. Kids playing out all day get hungry, and you were always guaranteed a ‘piece’ – a piece being a sandwich. The people of Naples feel like that, there’s this local community spirit that I share with the Neapolitans, which is why, when making Posso entrare? An Ode to Naples, I think I was pretty fearless in finding my story through them.

The film features music from Scarlatti all the way up to Pino Daniele, who died quite young but not before writing these anthemic songs that every Neapolitan knows. And at the top of the show we meet Clemente Maccaro, a Neapolitan-born rapper. Music is in Neapolitans’ veins and it runs through them like deep rivers. Everyone is singing all day long. Music comes from every home as you walk through the vicoli.

I was very lucky in my film to collaborate with Walter Fasano, who is very gifted with music. It was imperative that we are reflecting only Naples – we’re not going to Capri, we’re not going to Positano, we’re staying in Napoli. And I wanted the music to reflect that and to go through the ages. I discovered, with Walter a really wonderful composer, Camillo de Nardis, whose music we used to accompany an archive film from the 1920s of people going up Vesuvius.

The movie features a project involving prisoners. Wood is collected from the boats that land in Lampedusa, carrying refugees who dream of an escape to Italy – and sadly, not many of them get their wish, and they’re often detained or sometimes drowned en route. These boats are usually left on the beaches, and where this project begins is by saying, ‘well, let’s not let them languish. Let’s recycle, repurpose them’ – so the boats are broken down and turned into stringed instruments. They asked if Sting would be available to play the first guitar that was to come out of the Secondigliano prison. It was very, very moving.

There’s a very famous song by Sergio Bruni called ‘Palcoscenico’. Some of the words are: ‘you can say that the streets of Naples are just this, they’re just a theatre; you can say that the people of Naples just want this, just want to be on the stage; there are comedy scenes, there are tragic scenes; and while they perform you can hear them singing, Napoli, Napoli, Napoli’. Bruni was always singing about what Naples is, and what it’s not – he really considered that Naples was a theatre and the people are players. And in fact spending three years amongst them, they’re the most charismatic, telegenic and confident people I’ve ever met in front of the camera. They can’t wait to tell you their life stories.

‘Posso Entrare? An Ode to Naples’ is now streaming on Disney+ UK, and in the US on Hulu from February 24