 Near the end, when Norma Desmond is told that the newsreel cameras  have arrived, as the light shines on her face and she gazes into the  mirror, the score quotes the chord (the flutter in the strings) from  the coda of the Dance of the Seven Veils from Richard Strauss  opera, Salome (the subject, of course, of Normas script); the same  quote from Salome is used again as she starts down the stairs.