Soprano Dilber Yunus plays the lead role in Visitors on the Snow Mountains. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The year 1984 is unforgettable for soprano Dilber Yunus. That year, China's women's volleyball team won its first gold medal at the Olympic Games, which were held in Los Angeles.

The same year, while still studying at the department of vocal music and opera at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music, Yunus won second prize at the prestigious Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition in Helsinki, Finland.

"I became a star in the campus like the women's national volleyball team," recalls Yunus, who is better known by her stage name, Dilber.

After finishing her master's degree at the conservatory, Dilber was signed by the National Opera House of Finland in 1988.

Since then, the Kashgar native from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has achieved success overseas, playing Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto and Lucia in Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor over her three-decade career.