Giulio Cesare Brancaccio was a Neapolitan nobleman with long practical experience of military life first in the service of Charles V and later as both soldier and courtier in France and then at the court of Alfonso II d Este at Ferrara. He was also a virtuoso bass singer whose performances were praised by both Tasso and Guarini - he was even for a while the only male member of the famous Ferrarese court Concerto delle dame who established a legendary reputation during the 1580s. Richard Wistreich examines Brancaccio s life in detail and from this it becomes possible to consider the mental and social world of a warrior and courtier with musical skills in a broader context. A wide-ranging study of bass singing in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italy provides a contextual basis from which to consider Brancaccio s reputation as a performer. Wistreich illustrates the use of music in the process of self-fashioning and the role of performance of all kinds in the construction of male noble identity within court culture including the nature and currency of honour chivalric virtù and sixteenth-century notions of gender and virility in relation to musical performance. This fascinating examination of Brancaccio s social world significantly expands our understanding of noble culture in both France and Italy during the sixteenth century and the place of music-making within it.