Jacob & Co. Opera Godfather

Introduced last year, the Opera musical timepiece combines two traditional Swiss crafts: a mechanical music box boasting two cylinders and combs and an exclusive Jacob & Co. JCFM02 manual-winding caliber. This breakthrough timepiece was challenging for the brand’s engineers and watchmakers, and as a result the Opera was in development for more than two years.

In this highly complicated timepiece, the two cylinders and combs are mounted on the movement and rotate around the dial each time they play the iconic theme from The Godfather. This works together with the triple-axis tourbillon and the hour and minute dial.

Unique Complication
A central flywheel drives the two cylinders, which was a real challenge for the watchmakers, due to the weight of the cylinders. A pusher located at two o’clock activates the rotation of the entire movement and simultaneously plays The Godfather melody. Each note is played as the tiny pins on the cylinder make contact with the individual teeth of the comb. As the cylinders turn to play the melody, the entire assembly on which they are fixed, including the triple axis tourbillon and the hour and minute dial, rotates 120 degrees around the dial.

The tourbillon rotates around its inner cage once in 40 seconds, while its intermediate cage rotates in three minutes and its outer cage in eight minutes.

Finally, in order to display the time with 12 o’clock always in its correct position, a patented differential gear system is used; the dial turns counter clockwise, while the hands keep time normally – quite the watchmaking feat!

The manually wound caliber JCFM02 has been developed specifically for this complication, using titanium for excellent sound. The movement, which is made up of 650 components, fits into a diameter of just 43mm.