When Mr. Kaufmann is at home — at a house he built about 45 minutes outside Munich, where he grew up and first heard opera — his life is downright idyllic. He spends his days off sailing in Bavarian lakes, swimming and playing tennis with his children. They go hiking as a family and obsess over soccer. (This summer, Mr. Kaufmann had the World Cup playing both at home and at the Bavarian State Opera, where he set up a projector that played matches alongside rehearsals for “Parsifal.”)

When he’s working, however, life as a father is much more difficult. His children start preparing for school around 6 a.m. — hardly an ideal time for an opera singer to be waking up the morning after a performance. But Mr. Kaufmann said he likes to maintain the rhythms of parenthood as much as possible: “Because if you don’t, you really lose the connection. If you just see your children for quality time later, it’s not the same.”

His daughter likes opera, but the boys mostly steer clear. Last year, he took the children to Australia, where he was singing “Parsifal” in concert. “They had a fantastic sleep,” Mr. Kaufmann said with a laugh, adding that his youngest son told him it was difficult to stay awake because he grew up accustomed to hearing his father’s voice in bedtime lullabies.

While Mr. Kaufmann’s desire to spend more time near home has been a curse for the Met, it’s a blessing for the Bavarian State Opera. Under the shrewd management of Nikolaus Bachler and the magisterial baton of Kirill Petrenko, the house has become something of an operatic utopia, with a starry roster of regulars including the sopranos Diana Damrau and Anja Harteros.

Mr. Bachler said that having Mr. Kaufmann near Munich is like winning the lottery. During this summer’s Munich Opera Festival, the tenor appeared twice, in Wagner’s “Die Walküre” and “Parsifal.” Mr. Bachler said that the two of them have a close relationship; they even grill together at Mr. Kaufmann’s house.

Being in Munich so much also means that Mr. Kaufmann is at ease among the company’s singers. The soprano Golda Schultz, a budding star at the Met and a member of the ensemble at the Bavarian State Opera, said that he comes into rehearsals relaxed, even goofy: “But once he’s onstage, there’s this light that switches on, that seems to radiate from him outward. It’s electric, and it just oozes from every pore of his body.”