freehandedness

Stories abounded about Voorhees's freehandedness with anyone telling a hard luck story.

Conventional operas of the 18th- and 19th-century variety resist directorial freehandedness to varying degrees, but "The Mother of Us All" demands an off-kilter production to match Stein's free-associatiove text and Thomson's cheery sampler of American folk styles, hymns, marches and reveries, underpinned with his characteristically mischievous wit.