The Teatro Municipal Baltazar Dias offers all Tuesdays guided tours in Portuguese and English at 10 am, where it shows it's facilities, you can appreciate the works of artist Alfonso Costa and the backstage of the theater itself.
Henrique Afonso Costa, better known as Afonso Costa as he signed, settled on the island of Madeira, in the web of Theatre Baltazar Dias over the 70s as a resident artist, with the aim to develop various artworks through the production of scenarios, props for the various shows and performed numerous restorations inside. Only recently the estate has been the subject of a study by Sara Canavezes, a superior technique of art history of the city council of Funchal, which has been cataloging the work of this artist in particular the paintings and in the process as she states "verified the existence of the screen, which I found to be of Afonso Costa, who was already studying and was carefully preserved as it was painted in 1978". For over twenty years this work has not been seen since because the pulley and balances system was broken and has only recently been possible to go down through a new mechanism that was installed by the technicians of the theater. In an unprecedented initiative the Funchal Municipal Council plans to open this cultural space to the public every week in order to show the screen is not used, that according to the technique has "very cultural and artistic value. We want to show more assets, not just the visual aspect, ie, plays and the concerts, we have art and we want to it make known. " The piece is unique in its kind, because "at least here in the island we do not have other, perhaps there will be more works in the theater D. Maria in Lisbon. As we did not use these systems for many years, since currently we used the projection video the screen becomes unique in its kind, because its function is different, is lay ahead, was used in between the plays, for this purpose has discrete holes allowing the technical or production see the public to check if everything was calm, controlled, or were liking or not the plays on stage. "
