Can music unite a young nation?

A third of Latvia's culture budget goes on music education and a new festival aims to galvanise national identity

In the UK it is almost obligatory for a culture minister never to have attended an opera. In Latvia, a small country that takes these things very seriously, the newly installed culture minister hasn't just seen plenty of operas, he's starred in them.

Nauris Puntulis a tenor who also had a successful pop career in his 20s, but is now the craggy, grey-haired minister-from-central-casting in the country's centre-right coalition government.