They end up embracing and are surprised by Annina and Valzacchi, who summon Ochs. Ochs goes off to discuss the wedding contract with Faninal, and Sophie asks Octavian for help. When Ochs, whom Sophie has never met, arrives, the girl is shocked by his crude manners. Sophie accepts, enraptured, and the two young people feel an instant attraction to each other. Octavian enters and presents her with the silver rose on behalf of the Baron. On the morning of her engagement, Sophie excitedly awaits the arrival of the cavalier of the rose. She summons her page and sends Octavian the silver rose.

The Marschallin tries to call him back, but it is too late. He passionately declares his love but she can only think about the passing of time and tells him that one day he will leave her for a younger woman. The returning Octavian is surprised to find her in a distant and melancholy mood. When the room is cleared, the Marschallin, appalled by the thought of the rude Ochs marrying the innocent young girl, muses on her own waning youth. The Baron hires a pair of Italian intriguers, Annina and Valzacchi, to locate the shy servant girl. Among them is a singer, whose aria is cut short by Ochs’s wrangling with a lawyer over Sophie’s dowry. The baron instantly starts to make advances towards “Mariandel,” who quickly makes her escape as the room fills with the daily crowd of petitioners and salespeople. When he asks the Marschallin for advice as to which cavalier could present Sophie with the traditional silver engagement rose, she suggests Octavian-who suddenly, to avoid discovery, emerges from his hiding place disguised as a chambermaid. Bursting into the room, he brags about his amorous conquests and his upcoming marriage to Sophie von Faninal, the young daughter of a wealthy bourgeois. The unexpected visitor is the Marschallin’s country cousin, Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau. He hides when a page brings breakfast, then again when loud voices are heard in the antechamber. The Marschallin, Princess von Werdenberg, has spent the night with her young lover, Octavian, Count Rofrano. Vienna, during the last years of the Habsburg Empire.

Perfect duet il corsaro nero