Roderick Earle was born in Winchester and graduated from Cambridge, where he read Music and was a Choral Scholar in the St. John's College Choir.  He then won a Foundation Scholarship to the  Royal College of Music, joining the Opera School, and later studied with Otakar Kraus. He was awarded a Greater London Arts Association Musician of the Year Award, and in 1980, after two years with English National Opera, made his debut with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden as Antonio Le Nozze di Figaro. He then joined the Royal Opera Company and went on to sing more than sixty roles with the company, including Schaunard (La Bohème), Abimelech (Samson et Dalila), Orestes (Elektra), Monterone (Rigoletto), the Bonze (Madama Butterfly), Brander (Faust), Harasta (Cunning Little Vixen), Kothner (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), the Philosopher (Massenet’s Cherubin), King Fisher (Midsummer Marriage) and Alberich (Siegfried and Götterdämmerung).

He has appeared with all the major British companies, toured to Japan, South Korea, Greece and Finland with the Royal Opera and appeared in the Festivals at Edinburgh, Buxton, Israel, Athens and Flanders. He has sung Kothner, Rangoni (Boris Godunow) and Abimelech at the Teatro Regio in Turin and Altair in the British premiere of Strauss’s Die ägyptische Helena and Ford (Falstaff) at Garsington. Other appearances include A Midsummer Night's Dream and Turandot (Rome Opera), Der  Fliegende Hollander  (Opera de Massy), Amonasro (Aida), Alfio (Cavalleria Rusticana) and Tonio(Pagliacci) (Raymond Gubbay at the Royal Albert Hall), Germont (La Traviata) and Scarpia (Tosca) (Holland Park Opera), Ford and the Count (Le Nozze di Figaro) (New Zealand Opera), Rigoletto (Opera Zuid), Monterone (ENO) and most recently the Police Inspector in Shostakovitch’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at Covent Garden,  the Devil in Tchaikovsky’s Cherevichki at Garsington, the Forester in the Cunning Little Vixen for English Touring Opera and Papin in Babette's Feast (John Browne) for the Royal Opera at the Linbury Theatre.

He sang Melchior Amahl and the Night Visitors directed by Menotti at Saddler’s Wells, and appeared in videos of La Fanciulla del West, Manon Lescaut, Andrea Chenier, Der Rosenkavalier (Solti), Carmen (Mehta), Salome (Downes), Otello and Traviata (Solti) and on the sound track of the film Meeting Venus. Recordings include Ferneyhough's Transit, the Gramaphone award winning Rossini's Stabat Mater with Richard Hickox and the Double Grammy award winning recording of Les Troyens with Sir Colin Davis.

Roderick Earle has a wide concert career and has appeared with the Munich Philharmonic, L'Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Polish Radio, RAI Milano, Ensemble Modern, Royal Scottish National, Philharmonia, City of Birmingham Symphony, Bournemouth Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta and BBC Symphony Orchestras, with such conductors as James Levine, Michel Plasson, Anthony Witt, Gary Bertini, Peter Eotvos, Neeme Jarvi, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, Kent Nagano and Sir Colin Davis. Recent concerts include Les Troyens with the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis, L’Enfance du Christ with the Leeds Festival Chorus and Ondino in La Campana Sommersa by Ottorino Respighi with Friedemann Layer and the Opera de Montpellier (also recorded)

In the season 2004/05 he sang, among others Leon Klinghoffer in The Death of Klinghoffer in Wuppertal, Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Buxton Festival and a revival of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at Covent Garden. In the season 2005/06 he was invited back to Wuppertal to sing Germont (La Traviata). 2006/07 he guested as Leon Klinghoffer in The Death of Klinghoffer in Oldenburg. In 2007 he sang Zuniga (Carmen) under Lorin Maazel in Valencia.

Most recently he sang John Hubbard in the British premiere of John Adam's Doctor Atomic and Dancaire Carmen for the Norwegian Opera in Oslo. Plans for 2010 include Necrozar in Le Grand Macabre at the Adelaide Festival and King Lear in the world premiere of Alexander Goehr’s Promised End at the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.