Nyers: Settle a disagreement for me...
 

When someone refers to "the Met", do they usually mean the Museum or the Opera house? <BR> <BR>Thanks! <BR>Kim

Unfortunately for confused tourists, the term is used for both places. So you really need to hear it in the context of a sentence to know whether you are talking music or art. <BR> <BR>Both of their websites liberally use the term "Met" <BR> <BR>opera house www.metopera.org <BR>art museum www.metmuseum.org <BR> <BR>It has been my personal experience that I have heard it used more in reference to the opera house and that the art museum is called the "Metropolitan". <BR> <BR>Of course if you really want to confuse a tourist, one of our baseball teams is called The Mets, so one player would be called a Met. So you might say "The Met, Mike Piazza, went to the Met and then afterwards met his friends at the Met."

When speaking of "the Met" I agree that it almost always refers to the opera house.

I usually, in contrast, mean the museum, and refer to the opera house that houses the Metropolitan Opera generally as Lincoln Center. <BR> <BR>

I'm a museum goer rather than an opera buff so with I'm almost always referring to the museum rather than the opera (which I would just call <BR>"the opera" though there are other opera companies, of course) but I agree with the others above that it could go either way.

I agree that the context dictates the meaning and it rarely if ever needs to be clarified. On the rare occasions that it enter my conversations it always means the museum, as I have no interest in opera.

Opera

Speaking as a fan and visitor to both, and I've never referred to the museum as the Met, but always the Metropolitan. Conversely, the Metropolitan Opera, more often than not, is referred as the Met. <BR>Having said that, who's to say who's correct?