Ruben Drole
Swiss opera singer
Ruben Drole (born 1980) is a Swiss operatic bass-baritone.
Life
Drole was born in Switzerland to a Slovenian father and a Spanish mother. He studied with Jane Thorner Mengedoht at the Zurich University of the Arts and won several singing competitions during his studies; he graduated with distinction.
In 2004, he was accepted into the International Opera Studio Zurich, and in 2005 into the ensemble of the Zurich Opera House. There he was immediately entrusted with larger roles, such as Lucio Cinna in Johann Christian Bach's Lucio Silla, Simone in Mozart's La finta semplice, Haly in Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri and Papageno in Nikolaus Harnoncourt's Magic Flute production by Martin Kušej, which was also released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon. In the three Lorenzo Da Ponte operas staged by Sven-Eric Bechtolf and conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, Drole took on Guglielmo, Figaro and Leporello. He also sang the title role in Giovanni Paisiello's Il barbiere di Siviglia, Argante in Handel's Rinaldo under the conduct of William Christie and also the Worm in Verdi's Luisa Miller.
In the summer of 2006, he made a guest appearance as Haly at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, with the Cleveland Orchestra singing the three Da Ponte roles in concert, and in May and June 2011 he portrayed Papageno at the Spoleto Festival USA. Shortly afterwards, he made his debut as Kecal in Bedřich Smetana's The Bartered Bride at the Styriarte in Graz, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. In February 2012 he sang and performed Figaro in a production by Harald Schmidt with the Bochumer Symphoniker conducted by Steven Sloane.
At the Salzburg Whitsun Festival and Salzburg Festival 2012 he took over Achilla in Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto - with four countertenors, Cecilia Bartoli as Cleopatra and Giovanni Antonini on the podium.
“Ruben Drole” enters the record as swiss opera singer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ruben, Drole and Swiss can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q16101736. VIAF identifies the subject as 267247742. The Library of Congress control number is no2008025140. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2004, 2005 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ruben Drole” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.