If you were to spend an evening gorging yourself on blancmange and buttermilk while staring at the persistently sinuous weavings of a Windows screensaver the experience would not be unlike that of watching ENO’s new production of Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de loin.

Premiered to acclaim in 2000, the Finnish composer’s opera has become something of a contemporary classic, but hearing the blandly palatable aural product in the flesh, it is tempting to rewrite the work’s success-story as the triumph of pragmatism and accessibility over actual dynamic spark.

The promise of the opera’s atmospheric opening, with its primeval grumblings and stirrings in the orchestra, remains sadly unfulfilled, giving way as it does to a fairly consistent musical palette, dominated by the tinkling of tuned percussion and the harmonic bendings of upper wind.

With the densely textured harmonies and lyric melodies of John Adams’s Dr Atomic – ENO’s other recent staging by a living composer – still ringing in my ears, I found it hard to accept the one-size-fits-all musical waftings of Saariaho.

As airy as the swathes of parachute silk that regularly envelop the stage, and about as substantial, the music’s lack of development, progression or even variation is striking. Some have attributed this to the essentially meditative nature of the opera’s ‘story’, yet to fail to bring musical colour to a fantastical tale of medieval love stretching from West to exotic East – however contemplative – seems wilful at best and inexcusable at worst.

There is much to marvel at and delight in the direction and choreography of Daniele Finzi Pasca, who brings his Cirque du Soleil sensibility to the visual tapestry of acrobatics and aesthetic tableaux, yet this seam of action at times felt strangely disconnected from the vocal activities of the three singers, distracting from rather than enhancing their narratives, and resorting to clichés of orientalism that Saariaho’s score – to her credit – largely avoids.

Baritone Roderick Williams almost single-handedly redeems the performance however. His fluid (yet substantial) English lyricism brings real shape and character to the challenging vocal contortions of the amorous Prince.

Joan Rodgers fares respectably as his distant beloved, but at times seems distracted by the role’s technical demands. The cast is rounded out by the excellent and expressive mezzo Faith Sherman in the somewhat bizarre role of the pilgrim-cum-pander – the architect of the love story.

While there are moments of beauty and intelligence to be found in this production, it largely contents itself with – most heinous of artistic sins – being inoffensive. The result is as rootlessly insipid as a ClassicFM compilation album, and about as exciting. Until Saturday. Box office: 0871 911 0200 (www.eno.org).