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 repertoire such as Mephisto ("Mefistofele") 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 "Simon Boccanegra", König Heinrich in Wagner's "Lohengrin" and Rocco in Beethoven's "Fidelio". Further engagements will lead him to the Berliner Staatsoper Unter den Linden as Pogner in "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg", to Stockholm as König Marke in "Tristan und Isolde" and to the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich as Wassermann in "Rusalka" and as Commendatore in "Don Giovanni".
Recent highlights include new productions of Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra" at the Opernhaus Zürich under the direction of Andreas Homoki, in which Christof Fischesser appeared as Jacopo Fiesco, and Richard Strauss' "Rosenkavalier" at the Bayerische Staatsoper, where he has continued to delight audiences as Ochs ever since. Guest engagements in this role, but also as Orest, König 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 Bayerische Staatsoper, 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 Stölzel's interpretation of Weber's "Der Freischütz" on the lake stage.
His broad repertoire also includes roles such as Landgraf ("Tannhäuser"), Gurnemanz ("Parsifal"), Sarastro ("Die Zauberflöte"), Sir Giorgio ("I puritani"), Banco ("Macbeth"), Conte di Walter ("Luisa Miller"), or Mephisto ("Faust").
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 Wiener Symphoniker under Fabio Luisi at the Tonhalle Zürich, the Wiener 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.