“He painted playing cards, developed a chess game for four players, invented fairy tales, was an important contributor to Der Blaue Reiter as a painter, witnessed Europe’s darkest hours, nearly made it in Hollywood, was a keen tennis player, and, as is generally better known, is one of the most influential composers in the history of music: Arnold Schoenberg. His music still divides opinion today.” So say the conductor Michael Boder and the director Johannes Erath, who have devised a “seriously crazy evening”—sadly for Schoenberg’s American fan base, all in German—to amplify and hopefully confuse the picture further. The title, Friday, the Thirteenth, alludes to the master’s killer case of triskaidecaphobia, or fear of the number 13. Get this: he was born on September 13, 1874 (a Sunday) and died on July 13, 1951 (a Friday). —Matthew Gurewitsch