Michael Tilson Thomas

And when I was a very young kid, she took me onto the stage of the Pasadena Playhouse, and we were standing on the stage, and she said, I must have been three or four at this time, she said, look up, Michela, look up, and look up, what do you see far, far away?

And I said, well, I see lights.

And she said, look further up.

And I said, far, way up there, you see that light up there?

It says exit.

I said, oh, yeah, that's very far away.

She said, well, up there...

That's the second balcony or the gallery.

And up there are the cheapest seats.

And in those seats sit the people who love the show the most.

She said, whatever you're doing on stage, if you're whispering, if you're singing, if you're soliloquizing, whatever you're doing, you must remember that it must reach those people.

The intent of what you're doing must reach those people.

You must be generous to reach your whole audience.

So things like that were very valuable advice, of course.

Pleasure.

Well, absolutely.

Of course, there were very many Yiddish newspapers in New York and Philadelphia and Chicago and all these major cities at that time.

But for the audience to go to the theater to experience a show, especially a show which was very often, in my grandfather's case, a kind of spectacle that

gave them a sense of the importance, the sheer scale of what was achievable by an immigrant in the United States.

It inspired them.