The day before a recent newspaper interview, Eva Franchi was out and about, putting up posters around Stonington for the 25th Sergio Franchi Memorial Concert coming up on Aug. 24.

At her gracious home — a 240-acre estate in Stonington that she and her late husband, the famed Italian tenor Sergio Franchi, bought in 1979 — the dining table was half covered with neatly laid out envelopes and concert invitations that she was going to write personalized notes on and send out.

“When I do this — and I’ve been doing it for 25 years — I put my heart and soul into it,” Franchi says of organizing the summertime concert that is held on the grounds of the estate named Farmholme.

“I do it with my soul, with my heart, and maybe that’s what made it what it became. My letters are handwritten letters to people, my invitations — handwritten, I can’t change from that.”

One thing that will change: the Sergio Franchi Memorial Concert will be no more, after this year’s final show.

It is a huge amount of work, but beyond that, she says this: “In anything in life, there is time for it. I feel this is the time. My heart tells me it’s the time.”

And ending it with the 25th concert seems perfect.

“I said to myself, ‘Well, if not now …?’ Will you stop at 24? You couldn’t. Would you stop at 26? No. 25th. 25th,” she says, in her distinctive Hungarian accent.

Franchi tears up occasionally when discussing her decision to end what has become a hugely popular summer event in Stonington.

“It’s bittersweet, but it’s OK,” she says.

She adds later, “The reason I am so exhausted is because (of) emotionally what I feel ending it, closing it, saying goodbye to it. … I walk on the street, and everybody says hello. In the market, ‘Eva, we’re coming!’ ‘Eva, when is it? When is it?’” she says.

Indeed, she’s a popular figure around the area. She recalls recently coming out of a late movie at the Stonington Regal Cinemas, and a policeman was on site. She said, “Good night, officer,” and he replied, “Good night, Eva.”

Some Stonington residents might be a little reserved, Eva Franchi says, and “I am so honored they not only accepted me, we love each other. We have incredible friendship with all of them.”

Without having to devote so many hours to planning and organizing the concert, she can spend more time with the people she loves — visiting California, where she has a home and where her siblings and nieces and nephews are.

Her brother and sisters in L.A., she says, “say to me, ‘When you coming home, Eva? When you coming home?’ And they right. We need each other. We love each other. … And I want to be there for them.”

And it’s friends as well as family.

“I just feel like I want to be a friend again to my friends, that’s an important one. Because I begin to feel I have no time for my friends. I miss my friends. I miss my time with them. I miss going to New York City to all the sample shows,” she says with a laugh. “I miss that.”

This year’s lineup

Sergio Franchi died at age 64 in 1990, after fighting brain cancer. He had had a thriving career, performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” nearly 50 times and starred on Broadway, among many other highlights.

A few years after his death, Eva decided to hold a concert in his honor. It was a success and grew from there. Over the last quarter century, the Sergio Franchi Memorial Concerts have brought in world-class singers — including James Valenti and Latonia Moore, who have starred in Metropolitan Opera productions, and Il Divo’s David Miller — and drawn an ever-burgeoning fan base.

Eva Franchi canceled the 2018 show when, during the course of the previous year, 14 people close to her died, seven from the Sergio Franchi Music Scholarship Foundation. Eva established the foundation to help talented young singers. The concerts have helped raise money for the foundation, awarding about $35,000-$40,000 in scholarships annually and having given out a total of more than 800 grants and scholarships.

She expects this final concert to be “the best ever.” Crowd favorites like Valenti, Moore, Jesus Garcia and Michael Amante will return. Moore, who will play the role of Serena in “Porgy and Bess” at the Metropolitan Opera starting in September, will sing “Summertime” from that opera on Aug. 24, along with numbers from “Madama Butterfly.”

They will be accompanied by a 32-piece orchestra led by David LaMarche, a Westerly native who is now conductor and music administrator for American Ballet Theatre.

‘Don’t stop ’til you find your dream’

Susan Neves, who has sung at the Met, will perform a number that Sergio Franchi often did, “Mattinata.”

Eva Franchi also asked Neves to sing “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from “The Sound of Music.”

“I picked that one, a message to all the young singers: don’t stop ’til you find your dream. This concert was nothing more than a dream of mine. And that’s what it became,” Franchi says. “And this is the time for me to say thank you, everybody. I couldn’t go higher, I couldn’t go more, I didn’t want to grow bigger. There is a time when you have class and style and say, ‘Thank you.’

Sending a message to fans of the concert, she says, “If you ever came, please don’t miss this one. Come, hold me up because I will need you. But at the same time, I also want to hug and thank you for coming.”

Franchi has often picked a theme that might inspire how audience members dress. One year was Great Gatsby and another the Kentucky Derby. This year, she is asking people to wear their “summer whites.”

While organizing this behemoth of an event each year, Eva Franchi has also been working at the Conair Corporation for the past 29 years. She created the hospitality division for Conair, which manufactures hair dryers, curling irons and other personal and home care appliances.

Asked if she would sell Farmholme, she says, “This is home to me, it always was, always will be. … But everything has a time for it. So someday, if the right person comes along, yeah, I would sell it, I think so. But maybe I want to keep one of the cottages (so that) I could always come back.”

A possible Christmas concert

Even though this will be the final Sergio Franchi Memorial Concert, Eva Franchi is already dreaming of a yuletide concert.

“I said maybe one Christmas, right in the back here, not the big lawn, not with the parking lot (that, during the summer concert, is filled with) 4,000 cars — right there,” she says, gesturing to the back yard outside her house’s living room window. She’s contemplating a limited crowd of 250 people, noting that her late mother always wanted a Christmas concert.

She envisions the house lit up for a 40-minute show, and she would have chestnuts roasting and hot toddies.

“And I even hope it snows,” she says with a smile.

She adds, “I will go out that way. I just can’t do this (major summer concert) anymore.”

If you go

What: Final Sergio Franchi Memorial Concert

When: Aug. 24, grounds open at 11 a.m., concert runs 2-5 p.m.

Where: Sergio Franchi Estate, Sergio Franchi Drive, Stonington

Tickets: $65 ($70 if purchased at the door)

Contact: (860) 535-9429, www.sergiofranchi.com