Christof Fischesser grew up in a musical family, received instrumental lessons from an early age and was a member of several choirs and ensembles. He studied singing with Professor Martin Gründler at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main and won first prize at the German National Singing Competition in Berlin in 2000. The Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe then engaged him as a permanent member of the ensemble and gave him the opportunity to sing major roles in his field such as Mephisto (Mefistofele / Boito) and Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) at an early stage. In 2004, he joined the ensemble of the Staatsoper Berlin, and from 2012 to 2015 he was a member of the Zurich Opera House, with which he has enjoyed a particularly close working relationship ever since.
He will also return to the Berlin State Opera as Rocco and to Zurich Opera House as Hunding in the 2023/24 season. He has also been invited back to Amsterdam and Vienna, where he will portray Sarastro in Simon McBurney's popular production of The Magic Flute 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 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.
His wide-ranging repertoire also includes roles such as Veit Pogner (Meistersinger), Landgraf (Tannhäuser), Gurnemanz (Parsifal), Sarastro (The Magic Flute), Sir Giorgio (I Puritani), Banco (Macbeth), Conte di Walter (Luisa Miller) and Mephisto (Faust/Gounod).
Christof Fischesser is also in demand internationally as a concert singer and has appeared in Janáček's Glagolitic Mass in Paris under Jukka-Pekka Saraste, with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Fabio Luisi at the Tonhalle Zurich, the Vienna Konzerthaus and the 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. His repertoire includes key works such as Beethoven's Missa solemnis, Verdi's Messa da Requiem and Mendelssohn's Elijah 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 direction of Claudio Abbado, Massenet's Manon under Daniel Barenboim and Wagner's Lohengrin under Kent Nagano.