A country chart-topping hit. A pop record. A Broadway debut. A collaboration with hit maker David Foster. A duet with Andrea Bocelli. These are some of the lofty goals that tenor Christopher Macchio, a native of Holbrook, Long Island, has set out for himself.
“I want to sing on stage with Plácido Domingo and perhaps even José Carreras, not that I have any pretensions of replacing Maestro—the late great Luciano Pavarotti in The Three Tenors,” Macchio told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.
“That would be a big dream for the three of us to be on stage together. The two Spaniards on either side of me.”
Coming from anyone else, these might sound like pipe dreams, but from Macchio, not so much.
“I sang in Washington a few weeks ago, and Andrea Bocelli was honored,” Macchio said.
“We were on the same stage on the same night, but we didn’t do a duet. I would love to do a duet. I had the chance to speak to his wife, Veronica, and she said, ‘We saw you at the inauguration. You have such a magnificent voice.’ They were very, very gracious.”
In the meantime, Macchio’s riding a high note as President Donald Trump’s go-to tenor. His performances have included singing the national anthem at Trump’s 2025 Inauguration; he was the closer after Trump’s speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he sang the powerful opera aria “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s opera “Turandot;” and he was the headline artist at the recent White House dinner for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman where he sang “All I Ask of You” from “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Nessun dorma.”
It was just a decade ago when Macchio first caught Trump’s eye—and ear—when he was asked to be a last-minute replacement for Elton John at a New Year’s Eve celebration at Mar-a-Lago. He was such a hit that night that Rod Stewart, who was at the gala, asked Macchio to perform at his own 70th birthday party. After singing at the White House memorial service in 2020 for Trump’s brother Robert, Macchio and Trump’s relationship solidified.
How the Opera Singer Found His Voice
“Very humbling,” is how Macchio described the spotlight he now finds himself in after being literally the kid who hid his singing talent.
“Every lunch period in school, I would gobble down my lunch, and I’d go right to the library,” he recalled.
“What better cheerleader could anyone have than Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th president of the United States. I feel really blessed, and I’m grateful.”
It wasn’t until he was taking a required arts class for his New York State Regents Diploma at Sachem High School North that he let others in on his talented instrument—his voice.
“It was quite the turnaround,” acknowledged Macchio after a choral director who had heard him sing told him. “‘Son, you have a gift and an obligation to share that gift.’ And so that was that.”
It was the public revelation of something Macchio had long suspected.
“If I was home alone or I had a few moments to myself, I would go into the bathroom for the acoustics, and I might sing,” he explained.
“I had my first inkling that I could at least carry a tune in ’87 when “La Bamba” came out—Ritchie Valens’ story. I was singing some of the songs from that movie. It just really moved me. My grandmother caught me in the bathroom singing, and she said, ‘Oh my goodness.’ And my uncle was known at that time as the singer in the family. ‘You have to tell your uncle that you can sing.’ I said, ‘No.’ Just my uncle who was in a high school Beatles band, that was far too intimidating.”
It was Macchio himself who slowly realized how far his formidable vocal talents could stretch.
“I did not grow up in a quote-unquote ‘overtly cultured family,’ [with] the benefit of my dad’s season tickets to the Met or anything like that,” Macchio said. “And while I’d love to wax nostalgic about ‘Sundays we would make dinner with my grandma, Mario Lanza would be on in the background.’ Honestly, those are other people’s stories that my singing evokes for them.”
So how did Macchio unlock his unique talent?
“One of the rites of passage is discovering your roots through what’s presented in pop culture, and of course, in the Italian American case, it’s the Mafia movies,” Macchio said.
“It was ‘The Godfather Part III’ where part of the plot is [that] his son becomes an opera singer. I bought the soundtrack and, in private, replicated all of the singing. And that is really where I first got this idea, ‘Wow, I can actually even replicate opera. So, kudos to me.’ But I still kept it a secret.”
From the choral director’s recognition of Macchio’s talents, it was off to the renowned Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts and lessons with John Kuhn, a voice professor from New York University, where his formal musical education began.
“It was that professor, who incidentally was a Holocaust survivor, who had been a star on NBC Opera [Theater] back when the networks actually carried such a thing. He was the one that started feeding me Pavarotti records and things like that,” Macchio said.
Artistic and Moral Values Drive His Vision
Today, for the kid who thought he’d study the law and become a conservative lawyer, it’s not just the marquee names and high-profile gigs that inspire him.
“Anybody that you have respect for and that can really bring it vocally is somebody I would want to collaborate with, so long as they also had the right set of values,” Macchio said.
“Because for me, moral and artistic values are an integral part of my identity as a person, as an artist. I’d want that also to be reflected in any collaborations I was involved with.”
No matter what the future holds, Macchio’s trajectory is already soaring.
“When I flew into D.C. for [the Inauguration], my flight path took me where at one point the Washington Monument and the National Mall and the Capitol Building all lined up as I was landing, and I just thought, ‘Oh, this is it. With all due humility, this is something that I wanted to do, being a supporter of our president,” he said.
“I wasn’t even looking at it as just, ‘Oh, it’s an honor for me.’ I wanted to do this for President Trump and for our country specifically. And so I was just so grateful to receive that call. After having gone through that, nothing is going to feel that high stakes.”
On his immediate plate is working with Turning Point USA on their alternative Super Bowl halftime show.
“You can’t just complain about people who are putting material out there that you might feel is toxic,” Macchio said.
“You have to be willing to proactively provide a credible and inspirational alternative to that material. This is an opportunity for folks in the conservative political sphere to step up and fund the arts in a way that displaces some of the content that they might find objectionable and fund things that they believe in.”
After that, a new patriotic studio album—designed to accompany Macchio’s appearances with Trump as he tours the nation in celebration of America’s 250th anniversary; a tour through India, South Asia, and Central Asia on behalf of the president; and a series of concerts at The Kennedy Center, crafted to honor the rich legacy of powerful music from the realms of classical music, Broadway, and the Golden Age of Hollywood are all in the mix for the soaring American Tenor.
