Christof Hetzer was born in Salzburg and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with Erich Wonder. Since 2001 he has worked at leading theatres and opera houses as a set and costume designer.
He had a close working relationship with the director Pierre Audi: their productions together included Handel’s Orlando at La Monnaie in Brussels, Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, Rigoletto at the Vienna State Opera, Tristan und Isolde at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, Parsifal at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Tosca at the Paris Opéra and the world premieres of Julian Anderson’s Thebans at the English National Opera, György Kurtág’s Fin de partie at La Scala, Milan, and Manfred Trojahn’s Eurydice — Die Liebenden, blind at the Dutch National Opera.
Christof Hetzer has designed sets for Stefan Herheim’s productions of Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Bregenz Festival, Offenbach’s Barbe-bleue at the Komische Oper Berlin and Le nozze di Figaro at the Hamburg State Opera, as well as sets and costumes for Herheim’s production of Wozzeck at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf.
He works regularly with the director Lotte de Beer, on productions including Jenůfa at the Theater an der Wien, Jommelli’s Didone abbandonata at Theater Basel, Don Carlos at the Stuttgart State Opera, Alcina at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Falstaff at the Malmö Opera, Aida at the Paris Opéra, Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg, Die Zauberflöte at the Vienna Volksoper and Faust at the Bavarian State Opera.
Other directors with whom Christof Hetzer has worked include Hans Neuenfels (La traviata at the Komische Oper Berlin), David Bösch (Das Wunder der Heliane at the Opera Vlaanderen in Ghent and Antwerp) and Jan Philipp Gloger (Der fliegende Holländer at the Bayreuth Festival). For Deborah Warner he designed sets and costumes for Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the 2016 Salzburg Festival and sets for a production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which received its premiere in March 2026 at the Teatro Real in Madrid.
