Reinaldo Droz

A pop singer in Venezuela, Colombia and Miami before he turned to opera, Reinaldo Droz studied at the Simón Bolívar conservatory in Caracas and made his stage debut in 2017 as Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore. From 2016 he worked with Raina Kabaivanska — in her master class at New Bulgarian University in Sofia and at the Vecchi-Tonelli Institute in Modena — and has been based in Bulgaria since; on 3 June 2018 he was one of three tenors from her school presented at Bulgaria Hall, in a programme drawn from Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi, Massenet, Puccini, Cilea and Giordano, and he has since sung in Sofia in a concert with Plácido Domingo. He took first prize at the Ghena Dimitrova competition in Pleven in 2021 and at the Anita Cerquetti competition in Montecosaro the following year. His roles include Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi, Ernesto in Don Pasquale, the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto and Serano in La donna del lago. His first official appearance came in 2015, in a concert arranged by the Italian cultural institute during the week of Italian culture in Caracas, followed by concerts in Valencia and a tour of Colombia and Florida. In October 2018 he was among the principals in the concert given in memory of Luciano Pavarotti at the Teatro Comunale that bears the tenor's name in Modena; in 2019 he sang his first Betly, Donizetti's, in Switzerland and then in concert in Modena, and in September of that year he took part in the Italian premiere of Leoncavallo's Requiem.