Paul Kaufmann was born in Halle/Saale. After attending the music school and the composition class in Halle, he studied voice with Prof. Roland Schubert at the University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig.
Following a two-year scholarship from the Franz-Josef-Weisweiler Foundation, he was a member of the permanent ensemble at the Deutsche Oper Berlin from the 2006/07 season through 2017/18. There he appeared in numerous roles, including Don Basilio in “Le Nozze di Figaro,” Monostatos, the First Armored Man, and the Second Priest in “The Magic Flute,” Nando in “Tiefland,” the Steersman in “The Flying Dutchman,” Brighella in “Ariadne auf Naxos,” Remendado in “Carmen,” the 1st and 2nd Jew in “Salome,” the Hunchback in “Die Frau ohne Schatten,” Valzacchi and the Innkeeper in “Der Rosenkavalier,” Mime in “Das Rheingold,” and David in “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.”
As a guest artist, Paul Kaufmann has performed at the Komische Oper and the Staatsoper Berlin, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Saxon State Opera in Dresden, as well as at theaters in Leipzig, Karlsruhe, the Gulbenkian Theater in Lisbon, and in Toulouse, where he appeared in productions such as “Euryanthe”, “Elektra”, “Tannhäuser”, “Tristan und Isolde”, “Turandot”, “Daphne”, and “Tiefland”. In March 2012, he made his debut as Valzacchi in “Der Rosenkavalier” at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. This was followed by debuts at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile, in “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” (2016), at the Opéra Bastille in Paris in “The Magic Flute” (2017), and in Lyon and Strasbourg (2018). At the Bayreuth Festival from 2017 to 2019, he portrayed Balthasar Zorn in “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” and the Third Squire in “Parsifal”; in 2018, he also took on the role of Mime in the festival’s “Kinder-Ring”.
Pandemic-related restrictions prevented his planned debut at the Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam. A production of “The Ring of the Nibelung” at the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden could only be streamed at the time with piano accompaniment; in addition to Mime in “Das Rheingold”, Paul Kaufmann also sang the role of Mime in “Siegfried” for the first time. The production in Wiesbaden was finally staged with an orchestra during the 2023/24 season.
This was followed by debuts at the Hamburg State Opera, the Theater an der Wien, and the Lille Opera (Vitek in “Vec Makropulos”). Most recently, he made his role debuts at the Leipzig Opera as Dr. Cajus in “Falstaff” and as the Witch in “Hansel and Gretel”.
In addition, Paul Kaufmann works as a freelance music engraver and layout designer.