Opera and Mechanical Watches | The Relationship Between Global Watch Brands, Contemporary Art, and Music
(boldness in design)
Refinement(refined finish)
Transmission(values and technology passed down through generations) This is an idea unique to a watch company managed by a family of musicians.
While RAYMOND WEIL integrated opera works and composers into the narrative of its watches, TRILOBE can be said to have integrated the light, architecture, and rotational motion present in opera spaces into the time display itself.
Rolex | Long-Term Support for Global Opera Culture
Rolex does not transfer specific operas into watch designs but rather provides long-term support to leading opera houses and artists worldwide.
Its partners include the Paris National Opera, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Ballet and Opera in London, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Opéra de Monte-Carlo, and Opernhaus Zürich.
By supporting skill transfer and providing long-term backing, Rolex helps to preserve performing arts, which vanish once performed, for the future. The relationship between Rolex and opera reflects a commonality between watches that accurately mark time and an attitude of cultural preservation across generations.
Bausele | Bringing the Sydney Opera House into a Watch
Australian watch brand Bausele collaborated with the Sydney Opera House to create the facility's official timepiece. The dial draws inspiration from architect Jørn Utzon's original design sketches, incorporating the curves of the iconic sail-like roofs into the watch's design.
Particularly intriguing is the inclusion of a piece of the Opera House's tiles sealed within the crown. This elevates the watch beyond a mere commemorative model, making it a piece that literally carries a part of the building on one's wrist. While TRILOBE abstractly expresses the light and movement of Opéra Garnier, Bausele is a brand that encapsulates the form and material memory of architecture within its watches.
TRILOBE | The Light and Circular Motion of Opéra Garnier in a Watch
For TRILOBE, Opéra Garnier is not just a famous Parisian landmark. This space, where architecture, painting, sculpture, music, dance, and light converge, symbolizes TRILOBE's creative philosophy of merging art and mechanics.
The ceiling of the Opéra Garnier auditorium features a circular ceiling painting by Marc Chagall and a massive chandelier. The painting is divided into 12 sections, guiding the viewer's gaze 360 degrees. In its center, the chandelier and numerous lights sparkle, creating a visual experience of circular motion, rotation, floating, and light.
TRILOBE's time display, which rotates the numeral-bearing rings themselves instead of moving hands over a dial, strongly resonates with this space. The sight of multiple rings for hours, minutes, and seconds moving at different speeds to form a single time also echoes an opera, where performers on stage complete a single work.
"Une Folle Journée Diamant" Expressing the Light of the Opera House
The work that most clearly demonstrates the relationship between TRILOBE and Opéra Garnier is "Une Folle Journée Diamant."
In this watch, a total of 150 baguette diamonds, approximately 3.1 carats, are set on three three-dimensional rotating rings. 70 stones are placed on the hour ring, 50 on the minute ring, and 30 on the second ring, rotating with light within a sapphire crystal dome.
To ensure stable movement of the diamond-set rings, the material and structure of the rings, and even the movement itself, were redesigned. Instead of merely depicting the opera house's decorations on the dial, the sparkle of the chandelier and the kinetic sense of the circular ceiling were transformed into a physically moving watch mechanism.
TRILOBE also aligns its stance with Chagall's ceiling painting, which once sparked debate due to its contrast with the historic architecture of Opéra Garnier. This avant-garde spirit, which doesn't deny tradition but adds new expression to it, eventually becoming an indispensable part, is also evident in TRILOBE's watchmaking, which eschews traditional hands.
Paris Workshop Still Overlooking Opéra Garnier
TRILOBE's watch workshop is located in the Opéra district of Paris. From the workshop windows, one can see the dome of Opéra Garnier and the column of Place Vendôme, and it is in this location that designers, mechanical engineers, prototyping specialists, and watchmakers continue their work under one roof.
Therefore, Opéra Garnier is not just a design motif referenced once in the past. It is the Parisian landscape where TRILOBE continues to create watches, and it is the creative background that daily supports the brand's artistry.
Manufacture Royale | From Opera House to Miniature Acoustic Space
Manufacture Royale's "Opera Minute Repeater Tourbillon" features an accordion-like case reminiscent of the Sydney Opera House. Opening the case reveals the complex movement as if on a stage, allowing the minute repeater's chimes to resonate through the surroundings.
Here, the opera house's form is not merely used as decoration; its original role as "architecture that contains and reverberates sound" is translated into the watch's structure. If TRILOBE creates a visual stage in its watches, Manufacture Royale creates an auditory one.
Chopard | Philanthropic Activities with José Carreras and Watches
Chopard, in collaboration with world-renowned tenor José Carreras, launched a watch collection in 1996. Early limited editions featured engravings of opera houses from around the world on the case back, incorporating the world of singers and performing arts into the watch's design.
What's important about this relationship is that it's not just a celebrity collaboration. After recovering from leukemia, José Carreras established a foundation to support research into the disease. Chopard supports this foundation through watch sales, linking the life of an opera singer, medical research, and watchmaking to long-term philanthropic activities.
Breguet | Supporting European Opera Houses and Performing Arts
Breguet is also a watch brand that has consistently supported performing arts, including opera and ballet. In 2016, it began a partnership with the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, engaging not only in watchmaking but also in activities that pass on historical artistic culture to future generations.
Unlike A. Lange & Söhne or TRILOBE, there isn't a direct connection where specific theater architecture is reflected in the watch display. However, as a Maison dating back to the late 18th century, it is a supporting presence for the European cultural background that music, dance, decorative arts, and watches have shared.
Watches Also Appear in Opera Itself
Watches have also played important roles in opera narratives. Maurice Ravel's one-act opera "L'Heure espagnole" (The Spanish Hour) is set in an 18th-century Spanish clock shop. The story involves the clockmaker's wife's lovers hiding inside large clocks while the clockmaker is out adjusting public clocks, and the sounds of various clocks are integral to the musical expression.
In opera, watches are not merely props that tell time. They announce deadlines, bring characters back to reality, indicate status and relationships, and sometimes become the very rhythm of the music. Fans of Maurice Ravel and mechanical watches alike will find value in this!
Mechanical Watches and Contemporary Art
Contemporary art does not just realistically reproduce subjects; it questions the viewer's sense of time, spatial perception, and bodily sensation itself. Movement, light, repetition, sound, materials, and chance often become parts of the work, and many expressions are only completed when the viewer experiences them over time.
Independent watchmaking today shares a similar philosophy. Moving away from traditional hands and markers, these watches question "how time appears" through rotating rings, jumping displays, floating mechanisms, and light reflections. TRILOBE's ring display is not just a tool for quickly reading time; it also has an aspect of kinetic art, allowing one to visually experience the flow of time.
However, a mechanical watch cannot exist solely as a free-form sculpture. Even if it is aesthetically beautiful, it cannot be a complete watch unless it keeps accurate time, maintains durability, and can be worn on the wrist. The tension between artistic inspiration and engineering constraints is precisely what makes contemporary creative watchmaking so fascinating.
Mechanical Watches and Music | The Art of Marking and Structuring Time
Music cannot exist without time. It creates structure within time through not only pitch but also tempo, pauses, repetition, accent, and the layering of multiple voices. A mechanical watch, too, takes the constant vibrations of its regulating organ as a base, distributing motion to gears at different speeds, and structuring hours, minutes, and seconds.
In an orchestra, musicians playing different parts create a single piece of music under a conductor. In a watch, components with different roles harmonize to display a single time. When a watch actually produces sound, like a minute repeater or a mechanical music box, this commonality becomes physical, not just metaphorical.
RAYMOND WEIL inherits the memory of opera works and musicians into collection names, Manufacture Royale transforms acoustic space into case structures, and TRILOBE creates stage-like movement on the dial. Although the methods differ by brand, they are all connected to music in that they "transform time into an emotional experience."
Commonalities Between Opera and Mechanical Watches
What opera and mechanical watches have in common is "measuring time."
- Collaboration of many specialists and components
- Requirement for precise tempo and harmony
- Impact of a single small flaw on the whole
- Concealing advanced technology backstage or within the movement
- Ultimately delivering movement and emotion to the observer
A. Lange & Söhne transformed the opera house clock display into a wristwatch mechanism. RAYMOND WEIL inherited famous operas as part of its brand story. Rolex supports the continuation of opera culture for future generations. TRILOBE transforms the light, circular motion, theatricality, and avant-garde spirit residing in Opéra Garnier into "the art of moving time" through rotating rings.
Just as opera transforms time into a narrative through music and performers, TRILOBE transforms time into the art of movement through rotating rings.
CONTÉVANOU and Tokyo Opera City | Experiencing Watches in the Art District of Hatsudai
CONTÉVANOU, an authorized dealer of watches and jewelry, has a store in the Hatsudai/Yoyogi area of Tokyo. When coming from Hatsudai Station, please use the exit towards "Tokyo Opera City," and the store is about a 4-minute walk from the station.
Tokyo Opera City is a multi-cultural complex in Hatsudai featuring a concert hall, recital hall, and art gallery. The concert hall, named "Takemitsu Memorial," is designed to resonate as one large instrument, combining natural wood with modern acoustic technology.
The Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery showcases a diverse range of expressions, primarily modern and contemporary art, including painting, sculpture, photography, video, design, and architecture. In the same building, the NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] offers works at the intersection of science, technology, communication, and art, including media art. Additionally, the adjacent New National Theatre stages operas, ballets, and plays.
CONTÉVANOU believes it is highly significant to present mechanical watches not just as "tools for telling time" but as works where technology and art intersect, in Hatsudai—a town where music, theater, and contemporary art converge.
Comptoir N is an authorized dealer for watch brands with unique philosophies and craftsmanship, including TRILOBE and RAYMOND WEIL. After experiencing music and art at Tokyo Opera City, we invite you to visit our store to see the light, movement, rhythm, and three-dimensionality that emerge on the watch dials.
Photographs alone cannot fully convey the appeal of creative mechanical watches. The charm of displays moving at different speeds, dials that change with light, the rhythm of the movement, and the finish of the case can only truly be appreciated by holding the actual watch and wearing it on your wrist.