Opera Three Musical Watch

Musical movement to the passing hour & when required, power reserve, manual winding

 

Opera Three is an extremely refined musical watch capable to remind the passing time with a melody. Its mechanism works on the principle of a music box. Its heart is a miniature carillon with a keyboard of 20 blades and one drum set with 150 hand-assembled pins. When it turns, the drum lifts the keyboard keys, to play a complete melody.

 

As a delicate detail, Opera Three has a small lever on the side of the case for choosing between two melodies: Mozart's A Little Night Music or Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Or, according to the client's preference, a more personal piece of music… Another lever with three positions can disconnect the sound, make the melody play upon demand or activate it for each hour.

 

The dial is characterized with a small second at 6 o’clock and two indicators: the power reserve of the carillon and the selected melody.

 

Girard-Perregaux is the only Brand proposing mechanisms of this sort in the dimensions of a wristwatch. Opera Three is one expression of the Brand’s savoir-faire in terms of musical watches. At the start of the 19th Century, the prestigious Genevan watchmaker Jean-François Bautte, with whom the origins of Girard-Perregaux are associated, was making “de luxe” pocket watches with repeater chimes. This expertise has passed down the centuries, and has been enhanced with new levels of performance, to give rise to modern interpretations like Opera Three.

 

Only the most talented watchmakers master the development of the miniature mechanism. They devote months to crafting these unique pieces, from the machining of the components to the final control, via bevelling of the parts, polishing, movement decoration, assembly, mounting the dial and hands and then fitting the case.