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How does Scarpia secretly arrange for Cavaradossi’s execution to be real?

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Art Nouveau poster by Adolfo Hohenstein for Puccini's opera Tosca, showing a woman in a gold dress standing over a fallen figure, with dramatic red and black background and bold title text. — Tosca Poster by Adolfo Hohenstein for Giacomo Puccini's opera *Tosca*, 1906.

In Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, Scarpia deceptively agrees to Tosca’s demand for a mock execution to save her lover, Mario Cavaradossi. While he pretends to order a staged firing squad, he secretly intends for the execution to be genuine.1

Scarpia achieves this by providing Spoletta with coded instructions that override the mock arrangement, ensuring the firing squad uses live ammunition. Spoletta, who understands these hidden orders, carries out the preparations for an actual execution. Consequently, when the firing squad performs the ritual at the Castel Sant’Angelo, the bullets are real, and Cavaradossi is killed, revealing Scarpia’s final act of betrayal even after his death.12