Despite Italy’s leadership in instrumental music from mid-16th to mid-18th century, the Italian 19th century is strongly identified with opera and vocal music. The generation of instrumental musicians who operated in the middle of the century is represented by virtuoso-composers strongly influenced by vocal and opera style and, formally, by Haydn and Mendelssohn. Giovanni Bottesini is one of these composers.Since the end of the 18th Century, contemporary chronicles of foreign musicography describe a distorted and artificial view of Italian musical culture, which is typically considered to be exclusively vocal. In 1980 Dahlhaus introduced and emphasized the dualism of Beethoven and Rossini and their esthetic value: the absolute instrumental music as the way to access the metaphysic and deep significances; and the Italian opera portrayed as superficial and oriented to the delight of the senses. This devaluation, which adopted the esthetic of absolute instrumental music as a yardstick, influenced the worldwide approach and interpretation of Italian music, which has not always received artistic respect. As in much of 19th-century Italian music, Bottesini’s work is often exposed to the most disparate interpretations and performances, sometimes using this music to show off technical skills, and sometimes performing it with a superficial approach, thus rarely in accord with the Italian musical language of that period. Dahlhaus’ opinions may be one of the reasons of this superficial view of the composer’s music; another reason may be represented by the double bass itself as an instrument which, on its own, is so varied in shapes of the body, techniques of playing and schools. Last but not least, Bottesini, who traveled all over the world performing his music, left us a variety of manuscripts, often several for the same piece, with slight variations in phrasing and articulations. This document will establish a common performance practice for Bottesini’s instrumental music based on the École de Garcia: Traité complet de l’art du chant written by Manuel García in 1847, which will be used as guide for the bass virtuoso’s articulation and expression features. All these aspects translated for the double bass from Garcia’s treatise, together with oral traditions and information from Bottesini’s method, will be applied to and demonstrated through Bottesini’s Concerto di Bravura.