Highlights of the year in classical music included a pair of vocal showcases.

"Madama Butterfly": San Antonio Opera opened its 2009-10 season with a popular standard, Giacomo Puccini's "Butterfly," but director John de Lancie staged it 1,000 years in the future. It was the singing that still counted, however. Soprano Jee Hyun Lim's vivid voice captivated the San Antonio audiences three days in a row.

"Carmina Burana": The San Antonio Symphony opened its 70th season with a special, non-subscription concert that featured Carl Orff's powerful choral masterpiece, "Carmina Burana." Five area choirs participated, with singers scattered throughout the sold-out audience. The famed violinist Gil Shaham started the evening with Samuel Barber's bewitchingly beautiful Violin Concerto.

"Soulful Sorbets": The Cactus Pear Music Festival was prudently scaled back this summer in musicians and concerts, but the opening concert's performance of the rarely played Ralph Vaughan Williams' Piano Quintet of 1903 was a cool breeze in the midst of the long summer's sizzle. It was a revelation.

"Music-at-Arms": The San Antonio Symphony and the Mastersingers went to war with a program that included Franz Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 100, "Military," and Aleksandr Borodin's "Polovtsian Dances." The violent action, though, came from Sergei Prokofiev's cantata "Alexander Nevsky." The pounding "Battle on the Ice" scene left the audience breathless.

"Beethoven's Seventh": Mexico-born conductor Alondra de la Parra sprung all the happiness possible from the deep well known as Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. The work ended a San Antonio Symphony program of feminine power, with guest violinist Jennifer Koh nailing the Sergei Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 and de la Parra presenting Brazilian composer Clarise Assad's "Brazilian Fanfare," a humorous, swinging, charming tour of the Latin American nation's many musical moods, including a samba.

San Antonio Symphony and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet: The quartet evoked contrasts and subtleties from Sergio Assad's commissioned work. The orchestra, under Gregory Vajda's baton, shimmered through Ravel and rocked with Beethoven.

"Tootie Fruitti Ice": The final program of the 13th Cactus Pear Festival presented three masters of chamber music - Robert Schumann, Mendelssohn and Brahms. The visiting musicians, led by the former concertmaster of the San Antonio Symphony, Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio, performed the compositions with a joyous energy - raising the bar for the 2010 festival.

Freelance writer Modrea Mitchell-Reichert contributed to this list.