Ellen Mawhinney attends the 2024 TSM Academy courtesy of the Barbara & Kit Moore Fellowship.

Hometown: County Antrim, Northern Ireland 

Ellen Mawhinney studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and is now studying with Kate Paterson and Ingrid Surgenor at the Royal Academy of Music Opera School. Ellen is the winner of Northern Ireland Opera’s Young Opera Voice of the Year award, the Deborah Voigt Prize at Northern Ireland Opera’s Festival of Voice, and the inaugural Charles Wood Song Competition. She has been a featured artist live on BBC Radio 3: In Tune and spotlight recitalist for Classical Connections with BBCNI. She is a Leeds Lieder Young Artist, a Josephine Baker Trust artist and a member of the Academy Song Circle. She is the grateful recipient of the John Talbot Collender Award.  

In 2023, she performed the role of Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Ginevra in Handel’s Ariodante and the role of Miss Wordsworth for the spring production of Britten’s Albert Herring. She is now preparing the role of Josephine in Martinu’s Comedy on the Bridge. 

Other operatic performances include Falsirena in La fiera di Venezia with Bampton Opera, Annina in La traviata with Northern Ireland Opera and Chorus in Die Fledermaus with Northern Ireland Opera, Alice in Wonderland with Opera Collective Ireland, Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel and Jonathan Dove’s The Day After with Scottish Opera. Opera scenes include Leïla in Les pêcheurs de perles and First Niece in Peter Grimes for Royal Academy Opera, and Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel, Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Zdenka in Arabella and Margueritein Faust for Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.