Born and bred in Swansea, Elin read Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Clare College, Cambridge, where she was a Choral Scholar before moving to the musical world and carving a career as one of Britain’s leading young sopranos. Her début album with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Eternal Light, entered the classical charts in 2007 at number two, her Signum release in 2009, Patrick Hawes’s Song of Songs was CD of the week on Classic FM, and her recording of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with Florilegium was Choice of the Month in BBC Music Magazine in 2010. Elin is the first singer ever to record Bach’s Alles mit Gott, a birthday ode written in 1713 and discovered in 2005. 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. In 2009 she made her début at the Wigmore Hall with the Academy of Ancient Music, was invited to perform in the Vatican on Easter Sunday, and appeared at the Edinburgh International Festival with the Royal Flanders Ballet.
On the opera stage, Elin has played the part of Israelitish Woman in Buxton Festival’s acclaimed staging of Handel 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; Ninetta (Mozart La Finta Semplice) and Arminda (Mozart La Finta Giardiniera) in New College, Oxford; Despina (Mozart Così fan tutte) for Robin Ticciati and Cambridge Opera; 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.