Elin Manahan Thomas is a Welsh soprano, best known as a performer of Baroque music. 　　Thomas was born in 1977 in Gorseinon near Swansea, the daughter of M. Wynn Thomas OBE, a Professor of Literature at Swansea University, and Karen Thomas. She was educated at the Welsh-speaking Ysgol Gyfun Gyr in Gowerton near Swansea, and by the time she was fifteen was singing in the Swansea Bach Choir. She won a choral scholarship to Clare College in Cambridge University, where she gained a starred first in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, and completed an MPhil. After auditioning to Sir John Eliot Gardiner she joined the Monteverdi Choir and in the year 2000 sang much of the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage. In 2001 she moved to pursue postgraduate vocal studies at the Royal College of Music in London.