Cynthia Wood; Heiress Was Patron of the Arts, Horse Breeder

Cynthia Wood, 55, horse breeder and patron of the arts who was heiress to the oil-rich 30,000-acre Taylor Ranch near Santa Barbara. As a debutante, Miss Wood studied singing in Italy and worked for a time as assistant stage manager at La Scala in Milan. A generous benefactor, she was the founding president of the Friends of the Vienna Philharmonic and served on the boards of the Metropolitan Opera of New York, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Community Arts Music Assn. of Santa Barbara. Her gifts have included the 1990 telecast of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle by the Metropolitan Opera, and a planned public television broadcast of “Parsifal” scheduled for April 7. Growing up on a working ranch, Miss Wood built showplace stables in Montecito in 1968 and bred, trained and showed prize-winning American saddlebred horses until she sold the operation in 1983. On Saturday in Santa Barbara of cancer.