Christof Fischesser grew up in a musical family, received instrumental lessons in early childhood and was a member of several choirs and ensembles. He studied singing with Prof. Martin Gründler at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main and won first prize at the national singing competition in Berlin in 2000. Shortly after the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe engaged him as a permanent ensemble member and gave him early opportunities to sing great roles in his field such as Mephisto (Mefistofele / Boito) or Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro). In 2004 he joined the ensemble of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, and from 2012 to 2015 he belonged to the Opernhaus Zürich, with which he has since enjoyed a particularly close collaboration.
He will also return to the Berliner Staatsoper as Rocco and to the Opernhaus Zürich as Hunding in the 2023/24 season. He also follows re-invitations from Amsterdam and Vienna, where he will embody Sarastro in Simon McBurney's popular production of Die Zauberflöte and Ochs in Otto Schenk's legendary production of Der Rosenkavalier. The Bregenz Festival has invited him to take on the role of Kaspar in Philipp Stölzl's new interpretation of Weber's Der Freischütz on the lake stage.
Recent highlights include new productions of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra at the Opernhaus Zürich, directed by Andreas Homoki and featuring Christof Fischesser as Jacopo Fiesco, or of Richard Strauss' Rosenkavalier at the Bayerische Staatsoper, where he has since continued to thrill audiences as Ochs. Guest engagements in this role, but also as Orest, King Marke, Hunding, La Roche, Blaubart and Rocco have taken Christof Fischesser to the Wiener Staatsoper, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Opéra Nationale de Paris, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Munich State Opera, the Semperoper Dresden, the Opéra nationale de Lyon, the Lyric Opera Chicago and the opera houses of Amsterdam Antwerp, Basel, Copenhagen and Stockholm. He has also appeared at the Salzburg Festival and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.
His broad repertoire also includes roles such as Veit Pogner (Meistersinger), Landgraf (Tannhäuser), Gurnemanz (Parsifal), Sarastro (Zauberflöte), Sir Giorgio (I Puritani), Banco (Macbeth), Conte di Walter (Luisa Miller), or Mephisto (Faust /Gounod).
Christof Fischesser is also in demand internationally as a concert singer, appearing in Janáček's Glagolitic Mass in Paris under Jukka-Pekka Saraste, with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Fabio Luisi at the Tonhalle Zürich, the Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein, with Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Madrid, Seville and Valencia, and with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Claudio Abbado at the Lucerne Festival. Key works such as Beethoven's Missa solemnis, Verdi's Messa da Requiem or Mendelssohn's Elias are part of his repertoire as well as Brahms' Vier ernste Gesänge. He has also worked with conductors such as Bernard Haitink, Kent Nagano, Antonio Pappano, Philippe Jordan, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Kirill Petrenko.
Christof Fischesser's artistic work is documented on numerous CD and DVD releases, including Beethoven's Fidelio under the baton of Claudio Abbado, Massenet's Manon under Daniel Barenboim or Wagner's Lohengrin under Kent Nagano.