Flamenco Festival, at Sadler's Wells, Seven magazine review Fuenteovejuna wasn't the only disappointment at this year's flamenco festival. Manuela Carrasco is a junoesque diva of the old school, who can conjure whole dynasties of misery and subjection simply by sweeping an arm above her licorice coiffure - but her latest show, Suspiro Flamenco, was miserably thin. The star displayed little of the emotional depth and stylistic variety seen on previous visits and danced only three short numbers in 90 very long minutes, preferring to leave us in the unremarkable hands of her musicians and backing dancers. Music and dance were in similar proportions for Travesia on Monday night, but the results were very different. Guitar legend Gerardo Nuñez was joined by Carmen Cortés and a crack team of musicians for an all-too-short evening of marvels. The warmth and intimacy of the line-up, the improvisatory brilliance of Nuñez's guitar and Cortés's earthy, elemental solos made it seem as if we were eavesdropping on a private jam session, in which the artists were having just as much fun as the lucky voyeurs out front. The complex interplay between the shimmering guitars, clapping hands and weighty grace of Cortés's arms and torso was spellbinding. Nuñez, the modest mastermind at the heart of things, tickled familiar melodies into new and surprising shapes but was happy to take a back seat to his singers (how one ached for surtitles), and even the drum solo was sublime. Two encores were nothing like enough. Fuenteovejuna: * * * Manuela Carrasco: * * Gerardo Nuñez/Carmen Cortés: * * * * * Sadler's Wells flamenco festival runs to Feb 19; www.sadlerswells.com This review also appears in SEVEN, free with the Sunday Telegraph