ARAMAIC WATCH: That Latin and Aramaic production of Ben Hur comes to the O2 in London on 17 September:

Ben Hur Live coming to London's O2 Arena
Ben Hur is coming to the London stage, with real chariots and music and narration by Stewart Copeland of the Police

Bryan Appleyard (London Times)

[...]

Anyway, [Franz] Abraham went into business as a producer of big, live shows. He started with classical music (Placido Domingo, Philip Glass) and moved on to rock (the Stones, David Bowie). He created the genre of touring open-air opera with a production of Carmina Burana. He also did a “dinner show” called Ganymée on Water, on a giant catamaran. He seems to have over-reached himself with a production of Carmen in France, with Italian, German and Russian singers: “It was embarrassing. I said I’d never do that again.” The singers’ French accents were awful. This is why he’s doing Ben Hur in Latin and Aramaic. They are, he says, “universal languages”, and the only change as the show moves from one country to another will be the language of the narrator.

[...]

Background here.