Elena Laudati

Elena Laudati, 74, of Dongan Hills, who taught herself to compose music and write plays, died Thursday in the Golden Gate Rehabilitation and Health Care Center, Meiers Corners, where she had resided since January.

She was born Elena Tesoriero in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and grew up there. She relocated to Monticello, N.Y., in 1965, and settled in Dongan Hills in 2007.

Mrs. Laudati did not go to college and never had a music lesson, but she learned to compose music and write plays. From 1980 to 2001, several of her plays, among them a musical called “Those Fabulous Icons of Sheepshead Bay,” were produced upstate at venues including the State University of New York at Loch Sheldrake.

The works often shared a common theme, said her daughter, Rose Petraglia, “They were about people joining forces and getting along together.

Mrs. Laudati was a leader of the Bethel Broncos 4H Club in Bethel, N.Y., for five years.

She was a parishioner of Our Lady Queen of Peace R.C. Church, New Dorp.

Her husband of 51 years, Vincent, died in 2007.

Along with her daughter, surviving are her sons, Anthony, Michael and Joseph; three brothers, Thomas, Peter and Anthony; two sisters, Marie Dalelio and Angelina Tesoriero, and two grandchildren.