OPERA REVIEW : A Rocky Marriage for Mozart’s ‘Figaro’ at Seattle Opera : Music: Gerard Schwarz conducts a new production that sounds better than it looks.

“Le Nozze di Figaro” is a deceptive masterpiece. On the surface, it looks like a convoluted collection of sight gags. But it doesn’t sound that way.

Beneath its jumble of mannered masquerades, there lurks a poignant human comedy. The truth lies in Mozart’s music.

The new production at the Seattle Opera--a production that has drawn massive and ecstatic audiences to a 3,100-seat house for six performances in 12 days--doesn’t take the inherent pathos very seriously. Making his American debut in place of the indisposed Patrick Backman, Andrew Sinclair of Melbourne has concocted a heavy-handed staging scheme that tends to stress vulgarity in place of elegance, burlesque in place of wit.

This operatic shotgun marriage hardly acknowledges the crucial social distinctions that pit servant against master in Beaumarchais’ revolutionary battle of the classes. Adding to the sense of visual disorientation, Michael Olich has designed flimsy and awkward sets--mostly clusters of painted screens on a raked platform--that defy logic. His costumes, moreover, garishly contradict Baroque sensibilities.

Still, all was not lost Wednesday night. “Figaro” sounded a lot better in the Pacific Northwest than it looked.

Much of the sonic salvation can be credited to Gerard Schwarz, former maestro of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and now the celebrated music director of the Seattle Symphony. He respects Mozart enough to perform the opera virtually complete. In this version, which lasts nearly four hours, even Marcellina and Basilio get to sing their marvelous, admittedly irrelevant, bravura arias.

Schwarz cares enough about the style to at least pay sporadic attention to matters of embellishment and to encourage some flights of quasi-improvisation. Most important, he manages to balance the virtue of brio with the ever-increasing necessity for introspection. The conductor seems to understand the inherent dramatic stress, the grace and the complex structure of the piece better than the director does.

Speight Jenkins, the enterprising paterfamilias of the Seattle Opera, has provided Schwarz with a cast that is uniformly modest in vocal output. However, this ensemble does have youthful energy and expressive commitment in its emphatic favor.

Both Figaro and his nemesis, Count Almaviva, have been assigned to lightweight baritones. Under the circumstances, one can forget about timbral contrasts and heft in descending passages. Still, there are compensations.

Dale Duesing plays the erstwhile barber of Seville with impetuous bravado. He phrases elegantly, and, as an alumnus of Simon Rattle’s pioneering production in Glyndebourne last summer, decorates the line with imaginative point. Erich Parce complements him as a baby-faced, nearly sympathetic Count whose demeanor is forceful even when his voice is reticent.

Cynthia Haymon, celebrated as Gershwin’s Bess in Glyndebourne and on records, introduces a Susanna capable of guileless charm and exquisite lyricism. Sheri Greenawald produces some edgy tone as the Countess, and she doesn’t aim for much aristocratic dignity. She takes pretty advantage of the high Cs restored to her in the second-act trio, however, and sustains reasonable sympathy under trying theatrical conditions. Diane Kesling completes the treble trio as a gauche little punk of a Cherubino who runs out of breath in “Voi che sapete.”

Judith Christin, who used to be a model comprimaria and who still sings well, mugs outrageously as an Edith Bunker caricature in the guise of Marcellina. Darren Keith Woods contributes a prissy portrait of Basilio.

David Evitts, the ubiquitous Bartolo of the day, exercises becoming restraint in his buffo challenge. That is more than one can say for Byron Ellis, a cartoon-drunk Antonio, or for Paul Gudas, a Curzio who seems to think stammering is knee-slappingly funny.

The inevitable supertitles make the audience laugh often. That is good. The instant translations also make the audience laugh too early. That isn’t so good.