Metro

‘Voice’ contestant is alive thanks to liver donation from her dad

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(Tyler Golden/NBC)

The voice is her own — but her liver belongs to her NYPD dad.

Long Island teen MarissaAnn Rizzitello, who is on Christina Aguilera’s team on the hit NBC show “The Voice,” nearly died as a 6-month-old because of liver disease but was saved by an emergency donation from her father, Detective James Rizzitello.

“I felt it was something I had to do, regardless of how it would work out for me,” the Brooklyn North cop, a 20-year veteran, told The Post yesterday.

MarissaAnn, 15 — one of the youngest contestants to make it into “The Voice” — was born with Biliary Atresia, a rare disease that left the bile ducts attached to her liver damaged.

“It was a fatal disease, we didn’t hear of any survival rate,” Rizzitello said. “We were just devastated. We figured they were going to put her on the organ donor waiting list.

“Then they told us there was an alternative, that they could do a living donor transplant,” said the detective, who has a wife, Maria, and two other children, Michael, 17 and Laurille, 12. “I have the same blood type as MarissaAnn, I thought it was the best thing to do.”

Six years later, a much healthier MarissaAnn attended kindergaten in Long Island, where her teacher immediately recognized her talent.

She sent a note home that read, “There’s something special about her voice — it sounds angelic.”

Rizzitello, who still has the note in his Ronkonkoma home, took the message to heart and got his “little angel” a voice coach. Then this year, she felt ready and went in for an audition at “The Voice.”

“It was the weirdest feeling,” the teen said. “I wasn’t nervous because it felt so surreal.”

Pop idols Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green both wanted MarissaAnn in their teams.

“I was just like, ‘Really? They both want me?’” she said. “It was so crazy and really incredible to know they were interested in me and wanted to work with me.”

But being a huge Aguilera fan, MarissaAnn picked her idol to coach her into the show’s battle rounds, where the teen will face off with other members of “Team Xtina” for a spot in the live performance stage.

Regardless of the outcome, MarissaAnn’s dad will be by her side.

“Me and my dad were always really close because he donated his liver to me,” she said. “Without that, I wouldn’t be here — period.