"The Bonesetter's Daughter," which had its world premiere Saturday night at War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, is a spectacle you won't forget: flying acrobats, floor-to-ceiling video projections, incredible colors. The massive stage and sets in the production from San Francisco Opera are drenched in psychedelic images — a Bill Graham light show ratcheted up by several decades of technology. Forget about the singing (which is excellent); this is a big-money opera production, with an emphasis on visual impact.

"Bonesetter" is also a sincere collaboration between novelist Amy Tan, who wrote the libretto, adapting it from her novel of the same name, and composer Stewart Wallace. The opera is about family, memory and the connections between generations of Chinese and Chinese-American mothers and daughters, connections as indestructible as bone. Tan and Wallace traveled three times to China to research the project. A dedicated student, the composer, who says he had known little about Chinese music prior to his travels, immersed himself in the ritual music of funerals and weddings; in rural music and urban music; in the folk music of minority peoples and the art music of Chinese opera. Out of this stew, Wallace has attempted to compose something reflective of both Chinese and Western music, something his own.

But something went wrong. The music lacks personality, a voice. It relies a good deal on leap-about speech-song, which isn't surprising, since that type of inflected vocal delivery is historically part of both Chinese and Western opera. But there's too much of it. There's also a lot of Steve Reich's influence: percolating minimalism. Here, Wallace, who has played in rock bands, throws in a bit of funk, tinged with second-line rhythm. There, he calls on clangorous, boinging Chinese percussion and swoopy vocal lines, echoing Chinese opera. His orchestrating abilities are vast; the orchestra evokes bracing colors and fireworks, skillfully cloaking the singers, but leaving enough open space for their voices to carry through. There's lots more in his grab-bag, but most of it isn't very engaging.

In fact, a lot of it is boring. The Prologue has a three-part canon for the lead singers; it's pleasant, but owes an awful lot to some of the more sophisticated, recent Broadway composers, like Adam Guettel. In the second act, Chang, the coffin maker and chief villain of the opera, who is plotting a rape, starts to sing "You belong to me!" — a viciously upbeat seed of a tune. A Sondheim moment. But Wallace drops it.

I left the opera house thinking, "Why can't this guy write a straight-out melody?" I mean, this is opera: Shouldn't there be a single aria that you can whistle on the way out of the hall? It doesn't have to sound like Puccini; I enjoy, even rely on, all kinds of crazy music. But I would like to remember a tune now and then. Is it low-brow of me to have such an expectation?

I hopped in my car, turned on the radio and tuned in to KPFA, the public radio station out of Berkeley, where a jazz show was in progress. Immediately, I was hit with one killer tune after another. Cassandra Wilson sang "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most." Unbelievable! The late pianist James Williams performed his gospel-jazz tune "Yes, Yes, Oh Yes" — catchy and absolutely beautiful.

I suppose I'm comparing apples and oranges, and yet: Stewart Wallace isn't the only classical or operatic composer who might take a lesson in writing concisely and melodically — and with heart — from someone with the talents of James Williams.

Frankly, I think there's something wrong with much contemporary classical music and opera. Time and time again, the same influences and strategies rear their heads: Reich's minimalist percolations (which no one does as well as Reich) are everywhere; so is the endlessly dreary un-spooling of speech-song. It's like we're stuck in a tape loop.

Where have the melodies gone? You don't have to go back to Beethoven to find them. Wagner wrote melodies. Debussy wasn't all atmospherics; he wrote unforgettable melodies. Stravinsky wrote melodies. So did Bartok. So did Prokofiev. So did Copland, Barber and Britten. Even Schoenberg wrote melodies! Bernstein sure as hell wrote melodies. (Well, he stole a few of them, but so did Stravinsky). John Adams can write breathtakingly beautiful melodies: Do you remember his setting of John Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV ("Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God) in "Doctor Atomic"? It's the opera's one hit tune.

Have the melody makers simply gone elsewhere? Left the classical shop and moved over to jazz (though even there, to be honest, there's lately been a slowdown in the production of great tunes) or pop? When you think about it, who, really, are the inspired melody writers of the last few decades? Lennon and McCartney. Brian Wilson. Laura Nyro. Stevie Wonder. Donald Fagen. Or, more recently, songwriters like Rufus Wainwright, Joanna Newsom or Sufjan Stevens are candidates.

Do any of today's classical composers deserve to make the list? Adams does: Check out "A Flowering Tree." So do George Tsontakis and Thomas Ades, composers who generate soulful and unique sound worlds that include melodies; not Frank Loesser melodies, but themes that are pungent, heartfelt, mystical and sometimes comical. The list is short, however. The classical world is said to have left behind the musty academicism that stifled it for so many years. So, why still the lack of melody? Do conservatories not emphasize the need for bold or beautiful melody? Are today's composers so swamped with information and influences that they can't think of melodies? Is minimalism drowning would-be melody makers in its percolating soup? Are we simply living in the time of the groove? The Steve Reich groove? The hip-hop groove? Or are today's classical composers simply shorn from rich ethnic roots? Maybe the songs of James Williams and Wayne Shorter, Puccini and Stravinsky rose out of a cultural grounded-ness that today is missing, especially in this country. It's ironic that "The Bonesetter's Daughter" is an opera about the search for cultural and ethnic identity; its music lacks character and voice.

I understand that there's more to music than melody, that music is written and performed with all sorts of objectives and that a good tune often isn't what it's about. "Doctor Atomic," as an example, is fired with remarkable music — highly unmelodic — that evokes psychological and physical, sub-atomic processes. I often feel the need to enter the maelstrom, to go deep with Unsuk Chin, Elliott Carter or Charles Wuorinen, occasionally even with Brian Ferneyhough, Mr. New Complexity. Like many others, I've enjoyed music by George Crumb and George Perle, by John Luther Adams and Kaija Saariaho. But for all their manipulation of color and texture, and despite the deep moods or meditative states they produce through their music, one thing they don't give you — any of them — is great melody. Neither, try as they might, do Jennifer Higdon or Kevin Puts. Osvaldo Golijov and William Bolcom, composers touted for their melodies, strike me as predictably derivative of folk sources. Esa-Pekka Salonen and Magnus Lindberg, composers I admire, write melodies, but alter and tug them about in the quirkiest ways. John Corigliano has hit on some melodies. Stephen Hartke, in his 2006 opera "The Greater Good," has written melodies that hover and stick. So has Derek Bermel. Nico Muhly and some of his young indie-rock-influenced contemporaries show signs of moving back toward melody.

Still, the basic absence of melody is the elephant in the room that classical music writers rarely mention. I realize there are people reading this who will insist that Bolcom or Golijov are melody writers on a par with Bernstein or Brahms. But I think most people will say not. I think they will agree that contemporary classical music, while it regularly produces many wonders, does not regularly or even often produce great melodies. And sometimes in the course of a long orchestral piece or certainly an opera, with people singing all night, you long for something to latch onto and love.

A few years ago, I asked conductor Marin Alsop, who directs the annual Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, Ca., why there's such an absence of great melody these days. She objected to the question. She said she hears terrific melodies all the time and suggested that I might need to listen differently, to think about melody differently. Maybe. We all need to keep stretching our ears, to be creative listeners. Still, when she said that — when she insisted that fabulous melodies are practically falling out of trees — I remember thinking, "Come on, that just isn't true." You don't have to be a genius to recognize that the great melodists have gone into hiding in the world of classical music. I say, bring back the melody.

Contact Richard Scheinin at rscheinin@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5069. More of his stories and reviews are at www.mercurynews.com/richardscheinin.