http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April05/Veverka_faculty_facets.html

April 27, 2005

Life for Joe Veverka: the cosmos, cooking and bel canto

ITHACA, N.Y. -- When Joe Veverka celebrated his 60th birthday in 2001, the Department of Astronomy came up with a novel gift: an open ticket to see any opera performance anywhere in the world.

But before Veverka and his wife, astronomy researcher Ann Harch, could take advantage of the gift, both of their mothers fell ill. So it is only now that the couple is able to plan a visit to the Stadtoper, the State Opera House in Vienna, where many of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's operas were first performed.

"Vienna is a nice place for opera, and it's a nice place to boot," said Veverka.

Veverka's love of opera began in the 1950s when he was a young man growing up in the small northern Canadian town of Cochrane, Ontario. In that time and remote location -- with the nearest town of any size more than 70 miles away -- his main source of entertainment was the radio. "I liked to listen to everything on the radio then, from the 'Lone Ranger' show to the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of opera performances from the Met," Veverka recalled.

It was these broadcasts that began a lifelong interest in opera for the man who would one day become a professor of astronomy at Cornell, chairman of the Department of Astronomy and one of the world's leading experts on comets.