Cathryn Ings speaks to her on the eve of the launch of her new album.

I first bumped into Elin Manahan Thomas back in April. She was in the loos at St Barnabas Chapel in Central London, a jewel of calm just off hectic Oxford Street.

She was getting changed ready to appear at the showcase that record giants Universal had put on for her. The event was a celebration of the fact that the soprano from Gorseinon had signed a five-album deal with Universal Classics and Jazz (UCJ), home to artists such as Pavarotti, Bryn Terfel and Nicola Benedetti.

The 29-year-old former pupil of Ysgol Gyfun Gwyr is the first artist to sign for Universal's classical label Heliodor which has been revived to house UCJ's core classical names.

This is huge news for Elin and an indication that UCJ feel they have a huge star in the making on their hands.

Elin looked amazing on the night - blonde hair, startlingly blue eyes, luminous skin. She was wearing a beautiful emerald green dress.

As a classical singer who is both Welsh, talented, beautiful and, ok, let's face it, blonde, comparisons to Katherine Jenkins are inevitable and Elin doesn't have a problem with that.

After a brief introduction in which I commented on how nice she looked, Elin said she was undecided about what shoes to wear. She had planned to wear some killer heels to go with her lovely dress.

"I have to walk and sing at the same time. I don't know if I can cope with heels as well!" said Elin.

The invited audience who were gathered at St Barnabas chatted convivially over their glasses of champagne and nibbles laid on by Universal. There was a dreamlike quality to the evening, sitting in this tiny chapel with the evening sun illuminating the jewelled stained glass windows.

This feeling of otherworldliness was enhanced as Elin made her way into the chapel singing one of the songs from her album in a voice that was so beautiful it brought tears to the eyes and a prickle of goosebumps to the skin.

I remembered what she'd said about the heels and was surprised that she could float so gracefully up that ancient uneven chapel floor in stilettos while singing at the same time. I checked out her shoes and she was wearing her comfy, low heeled pair!

"Ahhh," I whispered to another journalist standing next to me, "Katherine would have worn the heels however much they hurt!"

I thought to myself that the comfy shoes with the posh dress seemed to represent the down-to-earth person that clearly lay behind Elin Manahan Thomas's poise and glamour.

Elin is an extremely accomplished woman. She left Cambridge University with a first class degree in Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic Studies. She speaks Welsh, German and French fluently. "I can also get by in Italian, if I speak it with a Welsh accent," she said.

Yet talking on the day following her well-received showcase, Elin confides that she is a big fan of Radio One.

"I just love Chris Moyles!," she said, "and Jo Whiley and Edith Bowman - I'm not so keen on Scott Mills, though."

"I love the charts. I absolutely have to know what's going on and I've got all the latest discs - Snow Patrol, Arctic Monkeys."

Growing up in Gorseinon, Elin said she was a total rock chick.

"I grew up on Queen. I love the Darkness. I also really like Mika at the moment - he sounds so much like Freddie Mercury. In fact I think I may go out and buy his album this afternoon."

Elin said she thoroughly enjoyed her showcase evening at St Barnabas - it must have been quite nerve wracking. As well as journalists and record company top brass, her mum and dad had travelled up from Gorseinon to be there too.

"I was extremely nervous. All the people there had put a lot of faith in me. They had decided to make a CD of me and I was worried that people wouldn't like it - because, of course, not everyone will. This was quite scary. But I really enjoyed it."

But if she was nervous on the night, you would never have known. She was totally composed and addressed her audience with composure and warmth. She is very well-spoken you only occasionally get a hint of a Welsh accent.

"I have lived in England for a while - but my accent definitely gets more Welsh when my parents come to stay.

"I really enjoyed the evening. My mum and dad were so proud of me."

"St Barnabas is such an amazing venue - I didn't know it was there, which is strange because I do sing in a lot of chapels and churches. It was a change from having just a room in an hotel. It had a good feel to it."

The music on her forthcoming album, Eternal Light, which is released on Monday, may not have the general appeal of Katherine Jenkins's repertoire. The music on this first album is entirely Baroque and includes work by Bach, Handel and Purcell. She sees it as her mission to make baroque music sexy again.

"Most people think of baroque as a style of architecture and a period that seems incredibly distant and remote," she says. "Yet the tunes on this disc are remarkably familiar today, even if listeners don't know that they are conveniently filed under baroque music.

Elin thinks that Sting's recent adventures with the music of John Dowland have helped introduce fresh ears to pieces all too easily dismissed as esoteric or archaic.

"I'd love to draw people to share my world of music making and, of course, this incredible music. It's about communicating emotions and showing people just how human and exciting these pieces are. This is music I believe in with a passion."

As a girl growing up in Gorseinon, Elin said she was always singing around the house.

When Elin was six, her parents recognised that their daughter had a love of singing so they sent her to local singing teacher Myra Rees.

"She was quite a famous singing teacher locally," said Elin. "She taught Denis O'Neill. Anyway, they thought I might enjoy that. I then went on to perform in eisteddfods and in choirs.

"When I got to Ysgol Gyfun Gwyr I joined the school choir and sang with them. But I never thought I would become a professional singer - I didn't even know then you could sing for a living."

Elin sang with the Swansea Bach Choir under the direction of John Hugh Thomas and this was to be a huge influence on her.

"That changed everything for me. I'd never read a note of music before, so I was on an incredibly steep learning curve. I didn't even know what sight-reading was!"

Performing Bach's St Matthew Passion, in company with a classy solo team and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, left a profound impression on the 15-year-old chorister.

"I wrote in my diary 'I've died and gone to heaven'! I learned German with a brilliant teacher at school so I understood the words and realised how human and immediate Bach's music is. I would sing Bach any time, anywhere!"

"John Hugh Thomas taught me everything - he is a phenomenal musician - Swansea is lucky to have such a talented musician."

Elin was brought up by her parents to speak Welsh. She learned German and French in school and believes that her ability to speak both Welsh and English from a young age encouraged her talent for languages.

"It made a big difference," she said.

And Elin said that speaking French and German helped her when it came to learning songs by foreign composers.

"When you learn a language, it tends to be stuff like 'I'm going to the shop to buy a loaf of bread'. It's quite different from learning to sing some massive romantic French aria. But German in particular - it was great to be able to understand what Bach and Handel were saying in their music."

"When I sang the Handel piece at St Barnabas, everything just went quiet. It's amazing that it is 400 years old and it can still get a strong reaction from people."

Elin won a place at Cambridge University where she studied Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Clare College.

She graduated with a starred first-class degree and was all set to begin an MPhil thesis on the Ninth Century Irish saga, Táin Bó Cúailnge, and the exploits of its youthful hero, Cúchulainn.

"He was the Achilles of his era, so I was fully concentrating on him," said Elin who was ready to embark on an academic career.

"But I already had an inkling that it wasn't the life for me. I remember thinking that, rather than living and breathing books, I was looking forward too much to my scone and tea in the university library at 11! So it wasn't the job for me!"

Clare College Choir helped point Elin in the right direction. Evensong in Clare Chapel, concert tours and recording certainly ensured that singing for a living became an option.

"Clare was choir non-stop, six days a week," she recalls. "Although it can be an emotional rollercoaster, I learned so much. I wouldn't have gone any further as a singer without my time as a choral scholar at Clare."

This was a good start to Elin's career, but her big break came in 1999 when she received a phone call from the prestigious Monteverdi Choir inviting her to audition for highly respected conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

"I honestly thought it was someone playing a practical joke, because a friend took the call and I couldn't believe it," she recalls. "I'd only sung in Clare Choir, the Swansea Bach and the National Youth Choir of Wales before, but it really was the Monteverdis. I sang some Bach the following day for John Eliot, he put down his newspaper and listened, and that was it - I was in!"

Elin joined the Monteverdi Choir for Gardiner's Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, a monumental Millennium Year project to perform Bach's 199 church cantatas in venues from Weimar to New York.

"It was an incredible journey. I was being paid to do what I loved doing. I thought I'd do that for a while - and I'm still here!"

Elin soon found herself singing for classical ensembles the Sixteen, Polyphony and the Gabrieli Consort. Her solo career took off when she stood in for a colleague in a Monteverdi Choir performance.

While she was performing she enrolled as a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Music where she studied for two years. There she was awarded the Ted Moss and Bertha Stach-Taylor Lieder Prize.

She achieved renown for her award-winning performance of John Rutter's Requiem, and has worked as a soloist with some of the very best names in early music including Sir John Eliot Gardner, Paul McCreesh, Harry Christophers and Stephen Layton as well as Sir Richard Hickox and Sir John Tavener.

Two years ago, Elin made headline news as the first singer to perform Bach's seductive aria Alles mit Gott for almost three centuries.

Last year was a big year for Elin with debuts at Birmingham Symphony Hall, Salle Pleyel in Paris, Lincoln Center New York and San Francisco Symphony Hall.

At around the same time Elin made a television programme for S4C called Soprano Bach - translated this means Little Soprano. She was spotted through sheer chance by an Universal boss and was asked to come and sing for the company. They liked her and the rest, as they say, is history.

Elin now lives in Brighton with her husband, Bob Davies, who is also a successful classical singer - he is about to begin a season with the prestigious Glyndebourne Opera.

Elin Manahan Thomas's CD, Eternal Light, will be available in all good music stores and online from Monday. Elin will be appearing at the Llandeilo Festival at St Teilo's church tonight. The concert has sold out but the festival continues with a variety of events over the next few weeks.

Source:South Wales Evening Post