In an Italian household, there were two figures for me growing up - you had the Pope and you had Frank Sinatra, and, of course, Tony Bennett. And not necessarily in that order.

Here I was in Estonia, doing a concert for 5,000 people, and not many people know the song My Way - Gorbachev in the 80s, My Way had just become a famous song, and [Mikhail] Gorbachev in a satirical, kind of cynical manner coined the term the Sinatra Doctrine and My Way was the song because the Baltic states in the Warsaw Pact wanted to go their own way and secede from the Soviet Union, so joking he says," Yeah, we've got the Sinatra Doctrine now."

Oddly enough, my mother was born in Southampton. I have roots in Southampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor. My grandfather, her father, Stefano Rullo, when he came from Naples, he went to Pennsylvania and worked coal mines.

My daughter [Ariana], she's a sweet, lovely girl, but she doesn't have the drive or the belief in herself. As it says in the film, I get touched up thinking about it, no one can give you a career. You have to have that inner drive. She wants it, but she doesn't know how to go for it, she's too shy. To see her perform and come on stage and feel comfortable, you know, she has talent - that was very touching, very moving, for me. She has a really beautiful sound and voice. She's a young girl still, 26, and innocent. She was kind of sheltered.

Everyone, young and old, was responding to [Frank] Sinatra. So, the first time that I physically remember, it was as a youth. He always seemed to be there, let me put it that way. I can't remember the exact first time, but I can remember the effect his voice had on me.

I studied with Stella Adler and I didn't like the representational aspect of most opera singers. Most of the opera singers had not a false, but over theatrical way of presenting.

I think back, when I saw The Great Gatsby, the film, my grandfather probably helped supply all the alcohol to all these Southampton parties, back then.