Wow, very first contest in a new series, and I messed up the hint. Yes, Martin de Bock, you are absolutely right, I did mean “Saturday”!!
Ferenc Erkel, Hungary’s most famous opera composer, was born on November 7, 1810. This building was named after Erkel in 1953, and underwent significant renovations between 2007 and 2013. To celebrate the reopening of the theater, Erkel’s birthday was declared A Magyar Opera Napja (Hungarian Opera Day).
The holiday, which occurred last Saturday is marked with special opera performances here and throughout Hungary and awards presentations for Hungarian opera performers.
According to Wikipedia (and perhaps Horváth (hhgygy) can give us some indication as to what this means and whether or not it is true), “It is traditional for a man to buy flowers on Hungarian Opera Day for a woman returning to work soon.”
If anyone missed the contest because I made the mistake, let us know in the comments of this post, and we’ll award you 1 point (since it was in the hint).
Those who found the site, all before the bad hint included:
- Lighthouse
- hhgygy
- Phil Ower
- Jesus Rodriguez
- Paul Voestermans
- Eloy Cano
- Garfield
- Martin de Bock
- Luís Filipe Miguel
- Kiribatian Jacob
As a person not particularly interested in opera I have never heard about this custom, not even the day of Hungarian opera.
However, I’m old enough to remember November 7th as the celebration of the Communist Revolution in Russia which was a national holiday in all countries behind the Iron Curtain.
Update: sorry, but please be aware that Wikipedia can be freely edited and it seems the claims in the article you referred to are absolutely baseless: there is absolutely no source supporting such a custom in Hungary although I’m a native speaker of the Hungarian language and tried very hard. It may be a fringe custom among a very limited group of people but surely not a nation-wide celebration.