Sir Edward Downes liked to say that his career as a conductor began when he sold tickets on buses during the Second World War. He went on to wield the baton at the Royal Opera House. His wife, Joan, was a beautiful ballerina who dedicated her final years to her husband’s work.

Last Friday, after 54 years of marriage, one of the most celebrated couples in British music ended their lives together in the sterile surroundings of a Swiss suicide clinic. Lying next to each other on a bed, the couple drank a fatal draught of poison.

Lady Downes, 74, was riddled with the cancer that doctors said would kill her within weeks. Her husband, whose life had been dedicated to music, could barely hear the final instructions or see the glass as he raised it to his lips.

Their son, Caractacus, described yesterday how he watched his parents as they fell into their final sleep after weeks of discussion during which the family agreed that they should die together. “It is something that I think my parents had considered in an abstract philosophical sense for a very long time when there was no danger of it happening particularly soon \ I think they had already considered the possibility,” he told The Times. “My mother’s diagnosis was the trigger for doing it then.”

Lady Downes was told in the spring that she had secondary cancer of the liver and pancreas. Mr Downes said that his parents decided to end their lives last Friday because they feared that she would become too unwell to travel to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich if they waited any longer.

“Both my parents were unwell with conditions you associate with old age and were in pain,” he said. “My mother was terminally ill. My father was not terminally unwell but he had physically got to the stage where he had decided he had had enough.”

Sir Edward, 85, had a long and distinguished career, working with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for 49 years and the Royal Opera House for 17 years. His wife had been a ballet dancer and subsequently worked as a choreographer and television producer before dedicating the final years of her life as Sir Edward’s personal assistant.

“They were both in various sorts of pain for which they took appropriate medication, some of which sometimes worked and some of which didn’t,” Mr Downes said. “It was very clear from the way that Dad talked that he had decided this is the way he wanted to go. He had become very frustrated with the problems with his eyes, which have been very long-term problems, but also his hearing, which had been going more recently. He was also finding it increasingly uncomfortable to walk as a result of a hip replacement several years ago.”

Sir Edward — a boy soprano who first broadcast on the radio at 13, and a talented horn player who first conducted at Covent Garden at 30 — found the ravages of old age increasingly unbearable. Despite rapidly worsening vision he had managed to keep conducting until three years ago.

“He was just feeling that his body was letting him down,” his son said. “His brain was still extremely active and he was frustrated at not being able to do the things that he thought his brain was up to and his body wasn’t.”

Most of their friends had no idea what the couple planned when

they left home and travelled to Switzerland last week.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• The Times celebrates its 225th birthday
• Heath discussed IMF loan during 1974 crisis
• Britain’s loneliest café opens for business