The 2025 Closing Gala features a gleaming array of soloists, the PFSMF Chamber Orchestra, The Consort of Melbourne, Vox Plexus, Port Fairy schoolchildren, and our combined Southwest Victorian PFSMF chorus, led by Festival Co-Directors Monica Curro and Stefan Cassomenos, for the world premiere of Eva – the dramatic telling of the Southwest Victorian tale of the Loch Ard shipwreck of 1878, of which there were only two survivors, passenger Eva Carmichael and midshipman Thomas Pearce. Based on a meticulously researched and masterfully written libretto by Mary-Jane Gething, this new work composed by Stefan Cassomenos grapples with Eva’s unthinkable story of survival, her fragile relationship with fate and destiny, and her symphony of emotions in the immediate aftermath and the events that followed. Presented as a semi-staged opera-in-concert, Eva is the compositional embodiment of something deeply and indescribably Australian, interwoven throughout with the universal themes and questions that form the human experience. Our whirlwind 2025 tour of the mosaic of human heritage, having taken us to so many different times and places, reaches its powerful conclusion right here in Southwest Victoria, as we come together on one shared stage to tell an epic story of our very own.

*Dedicated by the librettist to her late husband, Joseph Sambrook.

“Raby 1” by Marion Manifold used with permission