Conductor

Elaine Kelly

MARS

Biography

“Irish conductor Elaine Kelly is a discovery, tracing the musical lines with exactitude.” 
(Los Angeles Times, 2023) 

Elaine Kelly was Resident Conductor and Chorus Director of Irish National Opera until May 2024. She has conducted works by Donnacha Dennehy, David Cooney, Amanda Feery, Evangelia Rigaki and last year conducted the operatic world premiere by Emma O’Halloran in the PROTOTYPE Festival New York (January) and LA Opera (April). She conducted nine new works in INO’s internationally praised 20 Shots of Opera in 2020 and a nationwide tour of Maxwell Davies's The Lighthouse in 2021. 

Most recently, she conducted Gounod's Faust and Mozart's Così fan tutte with INO and Richard Taylors' Dawn to Dusk: The Moon is Listening with Garsington Opera, UK. In November 2023, she conducted the world premiere of Benedict Sheehan's Akathist in Trinity Church Wall Street, NY, recorded for album release this year. 

She has worked on Rossini's Cenerentola, Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Puccini's La bohème, Strauss's Elektra, Gerald Barry's Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, Beethoven's Fidelio, Bizet's Carmen, Donizetti's L’elisir d’amore and Maria Stuarda, as well as Rossini's William Tell, Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and Salome. She has worked as assistant conductor with Opera National de Bordeaux and Nouvel Opéra Fribourg. 

Kelly will conduct Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia with Longborough Festival Opera in 2025. 

She has guest appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Cork Concert Orchestra, Cork Opera House Concert Orchestra, conducted the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg and was Music Director of the Dublin Symphony Orchestra and the University of Limerick Orchestra. 

In 2014, Kelly won 1st prize in the inaugural ESB Feis Ceoil Orchestral Conducting Competition. 

July 2025.