Congratulations to NYT writer Michael Kimmelman, whose post-mortem on Katharina Wagner‘s Bayreuth Meistersinger contains a sentence that beats all world’s records for running, standing and equivocation:

The approach is not, in the abstract, without merit, Beckmesser having always seemed a proto-Jew to Wagner, awaiting modern redemption; the opera’s end comes across as the screed it always seemed.

La Cieca leaves it to her cher public to debate whatever ideas might be teased from this morass of weak passive voice; she’ll get the ball rolling by asking, “What exactly is a ‘proto-Jew’ and what qualities of the character of Beckmesser would tend to make him “seem” proto-Jewish?”

(More on Kimmelman’s column over at Sounds & Fury.)