AN EXCLUSIVE FROM INSIDE MAGAZINE
Set designer Tom Hansen knows artistic liberties can be essential in telling a story. When the story is set about a five-minute drive from the theater, though, he leans more toward the true-to-life.
Opera Tampa’s production of Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera Don Pasquale moves the story from mid-19th century Rome to Prohibition-era Ybor City. Tom’s research took him to – Surprise! – Ybor City.
“We were heavy on research,” Tom said, referencing himself and Don Pasquale director Melissa Misener. “Melissa did a lot of great research with articles and images. It was Melissa’s idea to have Norina work in a cigar factory.”
Tom and Melissa took a tour of Ybor City’s J.C. Newman Cigar Co. factory, America’s oldest family-owned premium cigar maker, “to get an idea of how it works and how it looks,” Tom said.
Tom teases that the set “incorporates some Ybor signatures which I don’t want to give away … but there are things that are going to be noticeable about Ybor right away, if people are looking for that.”
Tom, whose previous set designs for Opera Tampa include Norma and Pirates of Penzance, strives to be historically accurate although the demands of opera have their influence as well.
Touring the cigar factory, everything seemed “small and short” to Tom. In the set, however, “everything is bigger than in the real factory because opera is big and over the top,” Tom said. “It’s a fantasy story set in a real-life location.”
Don Pasquale, which will be performed March 7 and 9 in Ferguson Hall, is one of two Opera Tampa productions featuring Tom’s set designs this season.
Tom also designed the set for Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, which opened Opera Tampa’s 2025 season in January.
Like Don Pasquale, Candide’s set included a factory, albeit an abandoned structure unlikely to smell of tobacco. Tom and director Frank McClain created the factory as “a shell to which actors could bring on small objects that gave little hints as to a change the mood and location. They used simple props to change the flow of the story,” Tom said.
He’s created striking sets for Tampa Bay theater troupes including freeFall and Eight o’ Clock, as well as Opera Tampa.
Tom originally set out to be an actor. He moved to New York City after his first year of college and, although he managed to pick up a few roles, started getting more attention for his design work.
When he visited his grandmother in Florida, he “fell in love with the weather” and soon left the Big Apple for the Gulf Coast.
He apprenticed by taking any set work job he could find, absorbing the countless details and considerations set design demands.
“There are a lot of considerations. Safety, spacing and sight lines — you don’t want half the audience to miss something important,” Tom said.
“You’ve got to consider the size of props such as doors that the actors have to use,” he said. “There are a lot of different aspects from a design point that you have to cover that go beyond just what it looks like and how it moves.”
One of the challenges of musical theater is numerous scene changes. Opera’s challenge is the opposite.
“A lot of musical theater is heavy on set changes,” Tom said. “Some of them have up to 20 set changes. Act One of an opera will use one set.”
The consideration here, Tom said, is that “the audience is going to be looking at the same thing for 20 or 30 minutes, so you want to fill it with detail. So as an artist, you’ve got to spend time on detail and making it a visual experience for the audience.”
Working in local theater means doing a lot with a little. When Tom took a break from local theater, his assignments often involved doing more with more.
“These were the conventions, corporate meetings, the corporate parties,” he said. “A company decides to take its top managers or top salespeople and give them a weekend in Orlando. The organizers need people who can provide the stage and the video work and the scenery and the lighting and the audio.
“A lot of corporations want something that’s fresh, brand new, never been done before,” Tom said. “So it’s extremely creative where you’re creating things that have never been built before. For instance, an eyeglass company might want a 20-feet-high pair of sunglasses that people can walk through the bridge of.
“It’s a lot different than doing South Pacific four times in 16 years,” Tom said.
Opera Tampa closes its season with Puccini’s beloved La Bohème. To purchase tickets or for more information on Don Pasquale or La Bohème, please visit Opera Tampa online.