Two firsts for the luxury brand at Basel, where the limited edition Opera and Astronomia Solar timepieces wow the crowds with their unique complications.

At Baselworld 2017, Harry Winston was all about Art Deco and New York’s famed Broadway shows. Jacob & Co. had something similar in mind with the new Opera timepiece.

The stunning Opera brings together two typically Swiss traditions: the mechanical musical box and the mechanical watch movement. The unique piece incorporates two cylinders and combs, in addition to a miniature dancing couple in the centre, all powered by the exclusive hand-wound JCFM02 calibre.

The specially made movement has no less than 646 components and 52 jewels, delivering up to 72 hours of autonomy – so long as the watch is not constantly playing back music. When the pusher at 2 o’clock is activated, a 20-second melody begins, consisting of 120 notes. The cylinders and blades also rotate 120° around the dial, while the tri-axial tourbillon completes its revolutions to ensure that 12 o’clock always returns to its rightful place on the dial.

The limited edition 18-piece Opera incorporates titanium components to maximize on the quality of the sound. This includes the black DLC titanium case, which wears relatively small at 47 mm when considering just what kind of complication this watch brings.

But the engineers at Jacob & Co. weren’t done there. The luxury brand also introduced the new Astronomia Solar. In another first, this timepiece presents all eight planets of our solar system on a dial, orbiting around the Sun.

Living in a human-centrist universe, of course the hand-engraved Earth is the star of the show. It rotates around its axis once every 60 seconds and makes one complete revolution around the dial in 10 minutes.

The hand-wound JCAM19 calibre was specially made for this watch, which is smaller and has more functions than any of the previous movements in the Astronomia collection. This, despite its relatively smaller size and fitting in modestly sized 44.5mm case.

While the movement rotates our planet 360° clockwise, at the same time the aventurine base turns counter-clockwise. The result is captivating: it gives the impression that our world is moving forward in time.