Elin Manahan Thomas
Born and bred in Swansea, before graduating from Clare College Cambridge in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, Elin is fast coming to light as one of Wales’s leading young sopranos. Her début album with Universal Classics and Jazz, Eternal Light, entered the classical charts at number two. Elin is the first singer ever to record Bach’s Alles mit Gott, a birthday ode written in 1713 and discovered in 2005. On Easter Sunday this year she will be performing before Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican, in a performace of Andrew T. Miller’s Birth of Christ. She first received great acclaim for her ‘Pie Jesu’ on Naxos’ award-winning recording of the Rutter Requiem, and was praised as soloist in Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, under Sir John Eliot Gardiner. 2007 saw her perform in Classic FM’s fifteenth birthday concert, at Songs of Praise’s ‘The Big Sing’, and she was the subject of an S4C fly-on-the-wall documentary which was nominated in the 2007 Celtic Film Festival. In 2008 Elin performed the World Première of Sir John Tavener’s Requiem in Liverpool Cathedral (also recorded for EMI) and made her début at the Wigmore Hall with the Academy of Ancient Music. She has performed in many of the world’s leading venues, among them the Lincoln Center, New York; the San Francisco Symphony Hall; the Royal Albert Hall; Birmingham Symphony Hall; Westminster Abbey; the Conzertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Palau de Musica, Barcelona; the Casa de Musica in Porto; and St Mark’s, Venice.
Recent concert performances include a gala concert to close the Llangollen International Eisteddfod; Mendelssohn Elijah with BBC NOW for Radio 3 from St David’s Hall; Fauré Requiem with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; a solo recital in the Canterbury Festival; Handel Messiah with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra; the Mozart Vespers in the Mostly Mozart Festival for Harry Chrisophers; Weir King Harald Saga for BBC Radio 3, in collaboration with the composer; a concert of Spring Garden songs in the Temple Church, London; Handel Israel in Egypt for Stephen Layton in St John’s Smith Square; Bach Mass in B Minor with Huddersfield Choral Society; Vivaldi Gloria in the Snape Maltings with the CLS; Handel Dixit Dominus for Richard Hickox in Sherborne Abbey; Mozart concert arias with the Gabrieli Consort in the Barbican Hall; Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Peter Schreier in St John’s Smith Square; Mozart’s Mass in C Minor in King’s College Chapel; and Mozart Vespers on a tour of the USA. On the opera stage, Elin has played the part of Israelitish Woman in Buxton Festival’s acclaimed staging of Hanel Samson; Pamina (Mozart The Magic Flute) at the Helix Theatre, Dublin and Bridgewater Hall, Manchester; Belinda (Dido and Aeneas) with OAE in the Queen Elizabeth Hall; The Governess (Britten Turn of the Screw); Ninetta (Mozart La Finta Semplice); Arminda (Mozart La Finta Giardiniera); Despina (Mozart Cosi Fan Tutte); Mermaid (Weber Oberon) and Coryphée (Berlioz Les Troyens) at the Châtelet Theatre, Paris;and Night/Nymph in the Armonico Consort’s popular production of The Fairy Queen.
Elin studied as a post-graduate at the Royal College of Music, and was awarded the Ted Moss and Bertha Stach-Taylor Lieder Prize. In 2005 she was a finalist in the prestigious Joaninha Award. Future projects include the Songs of Praise Messiah special from Birmingham Town Hall; Handel arias with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on a British tour; Harvey Passion and Resurrection at the Casa de Musica, Porto; an anniversary concert for the RWCMD in Llandaff Cathedral; Bach St John Passion with Stephen Layton in St John Smith’s Square; Rutter Mass for the Children in Cadogan Hall; Bach Mass in B Minor with BBC NOW; performances in the Edinburgh Festival; BBC’s Proms in the Park; and a recording of Buxtehude Membra Jesu Nostri with the Purcell Quartet.