Elizabeth Irving Peters thanks her lucky stars that she has two sisters who enjoy talking to the press about their famous father.

But Mary Ellin Barrett and Linda Emmett were unable to be here, so there was Peters, flanked by representatives of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, making her first visit to Minnesota and talking about Irving Berlin.

Despite her preference for privacy, Peters was elegant, polite and gracious to a reporter asking about this trip to watch the world premiere of "Easter Parade" at Chanhassen Dinner Theatre. The musical was adapted by playwright Tom Briggs from her father's 1948 movie, and staged by Chanhassen artistic director Michael Brindisi.

Peters and her sisters are great protectors of their father's work, regularly meeting with Ted Chapin, the organization's president, to review potential projects. When he approached them with the idea that a modest dinner theater in Minnesota might be a great breeding ground for "Easter Parade," she trusted his judgment. After all, "White Christmas" had started this way, in an early production at the St. Louis Municipal Theatre, and then went on a three-year development journey before it emerged as a holiday box-office champ.

"I loved the movie so I'm very happy about it," Peters said. "You have to be careful to let professionals do what they do and not interfere. I did read the script along the way and commented on the song choices, mostly. I trust Tom's judgment. I hope this is the germ of something, but you know, it's show business."

Ah, so it is, and as her father wrote, there is no business like it. Peters, born in 1936, was the youngest of Irving Berlin's daughters and spent most of her childhood in the family home on Beekman Place, near the East River in New York City. Her dad worked at home, upstairs in his studio, with the door closed -- often at night.

"He had terrible insomnia," Peters said. Among her claims to fame, she gives up reluctantly, is that Berlin used her grade-school notebooks on Indian tribes to pen "I'm an Indian, Too" for "Annie Get Your Gun."It's not very politically correct now," she said.

While Peters and her sisters were "taken to the theater constantly," they were kept away from rehearsals and the "theater life." During summers, the family often trekked to California, where Berlin would work on films. Peters remembers taking swimming lessons in Fred Astaire's pool. Berlin was gone for three years during his service in the Army in World War II.

Otherwise, "we didn't do anything that was too particular to who he was," Peters said. "We had a house in the Catskills. He would fish -- he loved to fish -- and grill steaks."

Peters is on the board of Lincoln Center in New York, in addition to managing her father's estate with her sisters. And she avidly attends the theater. She loved "Light in the Piazza" and Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia." Both shows earned their fame at Lincoln Center.

Peters said that what she values most about growing up as the daughter of Irving Berlin was the gift of music in her home.

"I truly love not only his music, but all the music," she said. "I have this connection into this amazing body of American music. "