How long should the breath be retained before emission? There can be no hard and fast rule. It is a matter of circumstance entirely, and it certainly is detrimental to postpone the next inspiration to the last moment before the next note has to be intoned or the next phrase started. Every opportune rest should be utilized for inspiration, and, if possible, the breath should be inhaled a second or two before the note or phrase to be sung, and the breath retained until the crucial moment. Then breath and song together should float out in a steady stream. The result will be pure, full, resonant tone. A _pianissimo_ upon a full breath is like the _pianissimo_ of a hundred violins, which is a hundred times finer than that of a single instrument, and so rich in quality that it carries much further. It is the stage-whisper of music. This pause and the steadiness produced by it probably constitute what the old Italian masters of singing had in mind when they laid down for their pupils the rule "filar il tuono" or "spin the tone," in other words, the practice of emitting the breath just sufficiently to produce a whisper and then convert it into a delicate and exquisite tone--a mere filament of music. Even in rapid passages which succeed each other at very brief intervals and such as frequently occur in the Italian arias, it is possible to replenish the breath in such a way that some pause, however brief, can be made between inspiration and expiration. Watch Melba singing the Mad Scene from _Lucia_, Tetrazzini, the Shadow Song from _Dinorah_, or Sembrich, the music of the Queen of the Night in the _Magic Flute_, and you will observe that they replenish the original intake of breath with half-breaths, a practice which enables them at every opportunity to make the required pause before breath-emission. Moreover, it always allows of a reserve quantity of air being retained in the lungs. That sense of unwasted resource, the feeling so important to convey to the audience that, much as the singer has accomplished, the limit of his capacity has by no means been reached, and that, like a great commander, he has his forces well in hand, is holding back his reserves and does not expect to launch them into action at all, can be created only by perfect control of the air-column; and that control of breath is gained best by a pause, if only for a fraction of a second, between inspiration and expiration.