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 this house in the 2024/25 season as Fiesco in Verdi's Simone Boccanegra, König Heinrich in Wagner's Lohengrin and Rocco in Beethoven's Fidelio. Further engagements will lead him to the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden as Pogner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, to Stockholm as King Marke in Tristan und Isolde and to the Bavarian State Opera in Munich as Wassermann in Rusalka and Komtur in Don Giovanni.
Recent highlights include new productions of Verdi's Simone Boccanegra at the Zurich Opera House under the direction of Andreas Homoki, in which Christof Fischesser appeared as Jacopo Fiesco, and Richard Strauss' Rosenkavalier at the Bavarian State Opera, where he has continued to delight audiences as Ochs ever since. Guest engagements in this role, but also as Orest, King Marke, Hunding, La Roche, Bluebeard and Rocco, have taken Christof Fischesser to the Vienna State Opera, 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 in Amsterdam Antwerp, Basel, Copenhagen and Stockholm. He has also performed at the Salzburg Festival and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and accepted an invitation from the Bregenz Festival to take on the role of Kaspar in Philipp Stölzl's interpretation of Weber's Der Freischütz on the lake stage.
His broad repertoire also includes roles such as 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.
8. December 2024 - 16:00 Staatsoper Unter den Linden Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg |
15. December 2024 - 16:00 Staatsoper Unter den Linden Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg |
22. December 2024 - 16:00 Staatsoper Unter den Linden Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg |
HIGHLIGHTS 2023/2024