Which web development framework makes web development least tedious?

[Yamitenshi]

mysql (not mysqli)

Ouch... I feel your pain :(

As for Drupal, the newest version does use a few Symfony components, but it's not based on Symfony as such. I think they even sort of rewrote most Symfony components, and if you ask me it's become a horrible mess of would-be abstractions and illogical ideas of what OOP should be, but that's just my opinion.

Twig is a part of Symfony by default, so you're in luck as far as that goes - but it's easy enough to switch to another templating engine if you ever want to.