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Why does Tosca kill Baron Scarpia?

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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.

Tosca kills Baron Scarpia in an act of desperate self-defense and vengeance after he attempts to exploit her to satisfy his lust.

Scarpia, the corrupt chief of police, holds Tosca’s lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi, captive and sentences him to death. He offers to spare Cavaradossi’s life only if Tosca agrees to submit to his sexual advances. Although Tosca is horrified and disgusted by his demands, she eventually agrees to the deal to save her lover.

After Scarpia writes a safe-conduct note to allow the couple to flee the country, he attempts to embrace her. Tosca, seizing a moment of opportunity, stabs him in the chest with a knife she finds on the dinner table. As he bleeds to death, she taunts him, takes the safe-conduct note from his hand, and leaves him to die.1