The argument, practically a mantra of local arts management executives and repeated ad nauseam in the press, goes something like this: Classical music has a serious problem attracting younger listeners; young people like all things contemporary; therefore, contemporary music will lure them into the concert hall and opera house. The problem is that the empirical evidence tells just the opposite tale. When music composed in our own time is performed, the public stays away in droves.

Rather than confront the real issues, such as the lack of musical education among the students of today, the high price of tickets, or the incredible vapidity of the bulk of the works presented as new and different, the self-important members of our incestuous little circle of writers on matters musical simply blame the public and those who attempt to please them. There are several legitimate reasons for criticizing the tenure thus far of Lorin Maazel as music director of the Philharmonic, but the one most often presented, that he programs too much Beethoven, is patently absurd. The less erudite of my critical colleagues must carry in their wallets a little card that states: “contemporary good; traditional bad.”

The latest entry in the sweepstakes for capturing the public imagination is “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” given its world premiere on Sunday afternoon at the New York State Theater. Security was high at the opera house, as this work is based on a book by Salman Rushdie, the most famous victim of Islamo-fascism before September 11. As it turned out, Mr. Rushdie, and, even more relevantly, Haroun himself, attended the performance.

Mr. Rushdie wrote this fable as a direct result of the fatwa, feeling that the scum that put a price on his head had also attempted to take away his ability to tell stories. Seeing his inspiration in the wide-eyed wonder of his young son, he fashioned a tale wherein it would be the boy who restores the creativity of the father. Admirable unquestionably, but somewhere between Rushdie’s mind and the City Opera stage, the experience took a turn from the childlike to the childish.

A storyteller, known as the Shah of Blah, suffers from writer’s block. His son, Haroun, attempts to restore the old man’s gift of gab by setting out on an adventure to find the source of imagination, the faucet that dispenses the wish water of the sea of stories. Hoping against hope to also rescue a princess in a feat of derring-do – spelled incorrectly as “daring-do” in the super titles – Haroun encounters many unusual characters along the way with such names as Snooty Buttoo and Iff. Journeying to the lands of Gup and Chup, he teams up with the plentimaw fish (plentimaw fish in the sea – get it?) and…well, that’s more than enough.

There is much to like in this production. The costumes of Candice Donnelly are striking, the set design of Riccardo Hernandez employs all types of multimedia tricks and wonderful day-glo colors, the direction of Mark Lamos is inventive and, as befits his long association with the Hartford Stage Company, expertly theatrical. And the cast members, by and large, create their somewhat silly characters with a great deal of whimsy of the broad, slapstick variety. The libretto, by James Fenton, might even be considered clever.

But for those of us who still go to the opera house primarily to hear the music, Haroun was a very long afternoon. Charles Wuorinen’s score is derivative, repetitive and, worst of all, arbitrary. Taking the last criticism first, there was a palpable disconnect from stage to orchestra pit throughout this entire performance. Imagine an 18th-century opera that was all recitative by the singers, but the instrumental ensemble was also playing different music at the same time. This is a close approximation to the Haroun experience: the singers struggled to give life to Wuorinen’s displaced vocal snippets, while conductor George Manahan toiled away at the often blaring and mind-numbingly similar passages for orchestra.

For example, there is a storm scene in act one that is accompanied by a cacophony of triple forte braying from the pit. Fine, but this was at least the third time in the act where we had heard almost the identical music, always performed at a high decibel level. The act ends with a declaration of war from a whipped-up crowd, and the music swells to a frantic, blood-pounding climax. But wait, isn’t that the same music yet again? Further, any attempts to sound Indian or Middle Eastern were about as subtle as a George Harrison song composed during his thrall with the Maharishi.

Mr. Wuorinen’s sound was cliche-ridden; he employs every hackneyed effect of the post-Webern era, from flutter-tonguing in the flutes and brass to horizontal tone clusters that went out with the 1950s. Ironically, in trying to sound new, he has fallen back on the warm blanket of his academic training, producing a score that could just as easily have been heard at a Bruno Maderna or Karlheinz Stockhausen concert 40 years ago. Plus ca change…

Evaluating the singers under these circumstances was rather a hit and miss proposition, but I was especially impressed with Peter Strummer as the storyteller and Wilbur Pauley as Mali. By far the most difficult task of the day was left to Kathryn Friest as the princess, who, in the story, is known for her terrible voice and inability to stay on pitch. In what would seem to be an impossible assignment given the composer’s equivocal vocal universe, she actually came through with an even more unpleasant sound than those around her. Finally, Heather Buck as Haroun performed yeoman like service, forced to be out there for virtually the entire performance, although I never found her believable as a boy.

Mr. Wuorinen has simply picked the wrong children’s story to adapt. A version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” would have been much more appropriate.